Loki No. 1 - Glorious Purpose

(Slightly alternate version.)

Loki. His head is a bag of cats, but he is burdened with glorious purpose.

The more I watch Thor and The Avengers--especially Thor--the more convinced I am that his Loki is one of the most intricately constructed and best realized movie villains of all time. I didn't used to think that way; I struggled to figure out just what made him bad. Jealousy? Greed? Power? Envy? Anger? Hate? Or just plain crazy?

Then I saw some of the deleted scenes in Thor, and what I'd known for a while really gelled.

It's no one thing. It's all of it. It's everything.

So much feeds his descent. The deepest core is seen in Thor--it's what he says to his brother, to his father--but that's just the acorn the oak grew from. And the actual fall happens so quickly, especially in Asgardian terms. (Remember, by the time he turns, he and Thor haven't been brothers a few decades. They've been brothers for *millennia.*) And because there is so much, any chance for redemption is incredibly complicated--incredibly slim. If the comic canon applies, he is irredeemable.

But don't tell his brother that.

Don't ever tell his brother that.

And Hiddleston seems to get all of this. Whether he knows it or not. You know those pictures where you look at it one way and it's a duck, but look at it another way and it's a rabbit? That's how he plays this. If you look at any given moment one way, he's crazy. Rewatch it again, and he's conniving. Do it again and he's just hurting.

Every.

Scene.

It's stunning. And I really don't know if there are other actors who would've fit the role and could've gotten such a brilliant handle on it.

And I'm not even a Loki fangirl. (I'm all about Hawkeye.) Thank you, Kenneth Branagh, for bringing Hiddleston into the Marvelverse in this role. Thank you, Joss Whedon, for giving him a second playground to run mad in.

Anyway.

The details: Unless noted, all digital work is done in Illustrator. The outline (black part) of Loki is from a common promo photo of Tom Hiddleston in the role. Both automatic and hand tracing via Illustrator with quite a few adjustments. Solid colors are just brushed in, several gradients added, and anything with a texture is one of those handmade alcochol ink background papers I mentioned. Paint Shop Pro was used to adjust texture for color and orientation.

Incidentally, I chose to go with an unreal green for his eyes and not paint in any white because I thought he looked more angry and miserable this way. Angst is fuel. Sorry, Tom.

Final note: At one point in the Avengers, Thor has a one-liner about the fact that Loki is not his biological brother. As an adopted child, that is one of my favorite lines. I crack up every time.


Marvel owns Loki. I own the textures. Share freely, but no CC, and links back or credit are appreciated, though I know that rarely happens.