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Sharks players re-imagined as Bob’s Burgers characters by fan artist

We’re all dealing with a sports-shaped hole in our lives right now. Being in quarantine has brought back binge mode like it’s 2012 again. An unexpected side-effect is how that’s now turned some of us into walking Buzzfeed Quiz generators, asking ourselves things like Which Ducks player would you like to be quarantined with? and What if the other Philly sports teams played hockey? and Which players’ names sound like they belong in Star Wars?

Maybe we’re desperate for content, or maybe this break from sports is a time to dig deep into our creative consciousness and test the hypothesis that combining two good things makes something even better. Anything goes!

Coming out of this experiment a winner is May Cortez. The 22-year-old San Jose native is a Sharks fan who is used to expressing her fandom through creative mediums. Cortez has been a photography student for three years and always comes to Sharks games with camera in tow.

“Whenever I get to go down to warm-ups for a game I always take my camera,” Cortez told me in an email correspondence. “I want to explore more with sports photography and I hope to make a career out of it.”

Binging TV shows while the NHL is on pause like the rest of us, Cortez had an idea a couple of nights ago.

“I was watching Bob’s Burgers the other night as I was looking through my photography and thought about a cross-over.”

“Being stuck a home, with not much to do, gives me a lot of time to come up with projects I have never really put thought into,” Cortez told me, quickly deciding to make her cross-over idea a reality. “I would say I don’t really have much a background in digital art. Being a photography major for the last three years or so, I had to take some digital art classes, but I like to explore it on my own and at my own pace.”

After first drawing captain Logan Couture, she added Joe Thornton, Tomas Hertl and Erik Karlsson in the signature style of the FOX cartoon.

When asked about how long she’d been a Sharks fan, Cortez said, “I have been a Sharks fan for a few years now […] I loved the energy at the Shark Tank and I couldn’t get enough. Also, Tomas Hertl exists, that’s enough for me to become a fan.” So naturally, he was pretty high up the list.

“I would say my favorite one thus far is Erik Karlsson because of the flow and the mustache, but I also loved drawing Jumbo,” said Cortez.

As her artwork began to circulate on Twitter, the requests came rolling in and Cortez started to branch out to other teams:

You can open that thread for the complete collection, which now includes Auston Matthews, Alex Ovechkin, Nathan MacKinnon, Martin Jones and Sebastian Aho.

It seems like as long as people enjoy her work, Cortez is happy to keep going. When asked if she had more planned, Cortez responded, “Of course! It gives me something to do and it has made people smile! Also, it’s so much fun!”

I’d like to put in a formal request for Mario Ferraro, but no pressure.

If you’d like to see more of Cortez’s work, check her out on Instagram (@maycortezphotography) or  Twitter (@maysalisxcortez). If you’d like to make a business request, she’s available at cortezmaysalis10@gmail.com

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