RICK and MORTY - Total Rickall - The evolution of a parasite

Total Rickall had a crazy amount of new one off characters and once again the board artists had a real challenge having to stage and track so many characters on screen together. For the true die hards, if you noticed the green rocks from episode 2 that Rick puts in the trunk of his ship you might have seen a couple pink eggs attached to the rocks, the same rocks Rick throws in the trash at the top of this episode. The first parasite, post transformation, is the only one with larvae growing off its back suggesting that others had been laid in the house. From the beginning Justin pictured these parasites with a beef jerky body and after much research of microscopic bacteria/parasites (which is absolutely terrifying by the way) I started some roughs. During that process I thought it needed a dramatic death mechanism by having its neck foreskin fold over its face ending with tendrils shooting out its mouth gasping its final breath to contrast the colorful over the top nature of the parasites pre-transformation. The first page above exhibits my initial roughs and the more refined color versions I tried, but the transformations proved to be a real challenge for animation so the color team had to really simplify the color which worked better in the long run. Next are some early sketches for Tinkles and friends, which were a lot of fun to be able to introduce another style to the show, the far right one is the final color version credit to the color team. Lastly Hamurai, I started with more of a cartoony take on him but Dan wanted to go with a more realistic look to him.