Hideki Matsui is now a member of the Angels, and it’s sad to see the reigning World Series MVP go off to the West coast after being in pinstripes for seven seasons.

 

I wanted a kind of lonely image, and having watched a great number of Godzilla movies (and the monster being Matsui’s nickname), I recalled at the end of one of them Godzilla walking off into the sea silhouetted against a sunset.

 

My first idea was to simply have Matsui be given a pair of angel wings and fly off, but I thought it might be too much like a Red Bull commercial, ha ha.

 

This wasn’t really a large challenge, but it did take up a lot of time because it had a lot of layers and gradients, made a bit more complicated by the sunset (on which I used a bit of blur and smudge around the edges of the sun), shadows, and reflections in the ocean.  And yes, I’m aware that the most direct route the California is over the continent, but a) I’m going for imagery here and b) I’m thinking he goes down the Atlantic, past Cape Horn and back up the other side in the Pacific.  ^_^