Tempesthole

I got commissioned to do an illustration for the Finnish car magazine Tuulilasi (which translates into “Windshield”, hence the post title). It was for an article about a survey on where (Finnish) consumers seek information when they’re considering a new car. Car magazines – against expectations – clearly turned out to be the most important source – rather than, say, the Web. Since the article was to be loaded with facts, the client felt that the illustration could have a humorous slant and not be too literal.

Of course, when I got started with the illustration the actual article didn’t even exist, so there was little chance of getting too literal…

The image had a quick turn-around (only a few days, including a weekend) so I did some brainstorming, drew a few idea roughs as a pitch and send them to the client.

A was an Indiana Jones type of fellow exploring a temple-like car store, using a magazine as a map.
B was another guy using a magazine as a cover from the rain while running towards a car store.
And finally C shows a third guy familiarizing himself with the options after finding himself faced with an acute need for a new car.

Client went for A and after discussing what was wanted I set to work.

Above is my sketch and below what I ended up with – along with a quick spot illustration:

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I got commissioned by Aava & Bang advertising agency to do an illustration for marketing material for a town called Kiuruvesi in southern Finland. A fun gig that went as smoothly as one can realistically expect. The client’s brief was good and clear (as usual) so I was confident in what was needed – and eventually there were few corrections at any stage of the process. Nice to work this way!

As usual, there was bunch of stuff that needed to be included in the image – which in this case would feature couple of kids playing with a milk cart in an idyllic countryside scenery. While the final image would be bigger the most essential stuff needed to fit within a smaller frame so that you could use a tighter crop the image without losing anything important.

I did a bunch of roughs to figure out how to make everything fit and then drew a more polished sketch to send to the client.

The kids were pretty much ready to be inked by now but the background was left rough because we weren’t sure if a specific landscape needed to be included in the image.

The kids got an okay but it turned out that the client could use the illustration ahead of  schedule for magazine ads. The turn-around was very short so I got asked if I could just finalize the kids for the ads. I figured the kids would probably need some kind background for the image to make any sense, so I finished the kids and did a quick background based on the rough. I ended up sending three different versions with different colored skies because by that time I no longer had any idea which one I preferred and didn’t have time to sleep on the image either. This one got selected.

Time went by as a appropriate reference photo was searched for the background of the final. Eventually, all I got – along with some minor changes to the rough – was a picture of certain type of bridge that had to be featured. I sketched the background, sent it to the client and after a round of changes and some stuff getting left out, I finally got a go-ahead to finish the image.

That I did.

PS. I generally like to work in a way that affords me to go back and easily change things without having it affect the whole image, which means I usually end up with quite a few layers… to put it mildly.

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Here’s a couple of commissions I did for the Finnish metal workers’ union magazine "Ahjo". With the general election coming up in just couple of weeks here in Finland, the first article was about how well the current government did achieve their promises and goals. The bottom line pretty much was that while the long term employed did fine, the short term employed and the poor – like pensioners, students and unemployed – didn’t.

The client wanted something resembles old soviet propaganda posters a little with the proletariat standing side by side. This is what the final result was – with a montage type composition and all.

Apparently I’m more influenced by the golden age American advertisement illustrators than socialist posters, since – while the feedback for the published illustration was otherwise positive – the client (fairly) pointed out that the guy seemingly overlooking the woman and the girl came of as a slightly sexist and aged concept. Whoops – and I had thought of the lady as some executive type the whole time I worked on the image.

So, for the illustration to the follow up article – this time about the promises of the candidates and parties – I made sure all the characters were presented equal. And what are the parties promising us? This time both long and short term employed should do better, while the poor are still left out of the agenda.

On the left are the initial idea and composition sketches for the second illustration. The right ones I sent to the client to choose from and they went for #1.

 

And here’s the final illustration. Notice that the client had changed to layout to fit a horizontal format illustration instead of the initial vertical. Luckily it was easy to tweak the composition to fit the new shape of "the canvas". The women are supposed to be "looking ahead."

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