Danny Phantom

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the character, I'll give you the brief history:

Young Danny Fenton was just 14 when his parents built a very strange machine, designed to view a world unseen.  When it didn't quite work, his folks they just quit, until Danny took a look inside of it.  There was a great big flash, everything just changed, and his molecules were rearranged.  When he woke up he realized he had snow white hair, and glowing green eyes.  He could walk through walls, disappear and fly.  He was much more unique than the other guys.  It was then that he knew what he had to do- he had to stop all the ghosts that were coming through.  He's here to fight for me and you- he's gonna catch them all 'cause he's Danny Phantom.

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

So, yeah, I was a fan of Danny Phantom back in the day.  As were a lot of people.  I highly enjoyed it since I am a superhero fan, and Danny Phantom was an interesting take on the genre.  While not a superhero show per se, it was close enough to suit my tastes, and I found that its' stories and characters had a nice bit of depth and substance to them that other shows lacked (*cough*Ben 10*cough*).  The show also often pushed morals and life lessons that you didn't really see back then, and still don't to this day.  Granted it wasn't perfect.  The "Secret Identity" stuff is so obvious that even Superman is laughing at them.  But it was a show that was more balanced towards comedy than drama, so they weren't trying to be too "Realistic" with things. 

Danny was very likeable as a main protagonist.  Far too many shows took the approach that the main character starring a male lead had to be a jerk as a substitute for being a "Flawed" character, but DP managed to avert that.  Danny could be selfish and self centered at times, but he was also a decent enough human to realize when he made a mistake and would take steps to try and make things right.  His main abilities being "Ghost Powers" was also an intriguing aspect of the series, as the concept can lend itself to a wide range of interesting possibilities. Powers like flight, intangibility, invisibility, the ability to possess others, a "Ghost Sense," these were all things that definitely said "Ghost" but allowed for varied and dynamic fights.  Looking back in retrospect, I'd have preferred if they kept most of his abilities as passive or non-offensesive based abilities, rather than giving him the "Ectoplasmic blast" ability, since that meant most of the fight scenes just ended up being power blast contests.  But, I get why it was done.  Standards and Practices prefers "Non-Replicable violence" in cartoons, and someone shooting energy blasts from their hands is more palatable than people beating each other up.  But that's just me.

With this project, what I wanted to do was to try and draw Danny Phantom and his friends in a different style than what they are normally depicted as.  Most try to replicate Butch Hartman's style when doing fanart.  And while I could have done that, I decided to instead depict them in my style.  To showcase the characters in a different way than they are normally depicted. 

Starting off with Danny, I decided to do something different with his outfit.  Given his origins in the series, Danny was wearing a hazmat suit normally worn by his parents during their "Ghost research" during his investigation into the Ghost Zone Portal.  This became his "Superhero Outfit" whenever fighting against ghosts.  I kind of figured that the suit itself would have bonded with Danny molecularly, becoming a more form fitting outfit in the process, and more akin to traditional superhero garb.  I wasn't normally a fan of the "DP" symbol on Danny's chest in the original design, but I think it works better with this depiction since the more pronounced musculature on Danny's chest allows it a broader "Canvas" in which to be displayed.