Birthday Graffiti

A little early, but I felt the need to get this up as soon as possible. Jou deserves a very happy birthday indeed.

I drew the line art and then basically built up this pic the moment I started coloring it.
It started with a birthday candle background, but then I had a lot of white to contend with. I tried shadows and various colors to fill the white, but nothing really worked well with the candles. Then the idea hit me
Graffiti.

So I deleted the candles and threw in proper fonts and a brick wall texture.

Funny thing is that there wasn't a whole lot of shading needed done on Jou himself.

Tossed up for the birthday contest.

EDIT: Altered the transparency of the brick texture so it's not so busy.