This is the last illustration I was commissioned to draw in 2023. Once again, Andrew Mark Sewell was gracious enough to request a funny Xmas greeting card for his partners at B7 Media.
For this one, Andrew wanted me to make a parody of The X Files, something I was more than happy to oblige because, to no one’s surprise, Mulder and Scully happen to be two of my favorite TV characters of all time.
Andrew gave me full creative control with the composition, so one of my suggestions centered around the idea of Fox and Dana finding a secret underground laboratory housing all sorts of alien beings in vats —a motif that has been used in Sci-Fi since the old days of Amazing Stories but became fully cemented in modern pop culture thanks shows like The X Files and movies like Independence Day.
Andrew and his partner Helen Quigley agreed with the idea, but had some suggestions of their own about the kind of aliens that would be kept in the vats. For starters, Andrew wanted me to include the Mekon, a character from an old British comic book they are re-using in some of the B7 audio dramas they are currently producing.
For the second vat, Andrew wanted me to put Zaphod Beeblebrox, a character from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Like all politicians in the known universe (including our own planet) Zaphod has two faces, so Andrew wanted me to portray their colleagues Richard Kurti and Bev Doyle, who had also been part of the big Blake’s Seven commission I created a few year ago.
For the last vat, Helen requested a female version of Star Fox, the famous videogame character from the 1990’s. I never really played those games back in the day, but I’m always eager to accommodate the wishes of a fellow gamer.
Though the image looks simpler and less busy than some of my previous commissions, this one ended up being deceptively complicated due to the many elaborate elements in the composition: the different light sources and rim effects added to bring more drama to the scene, the props in the background and foreground, the clothes, etc. For some reason I decided to make this particular illustration less ‘cartoony’ than what I’m used to, which forced me to render things with a level of realism that translated into many more hours of work than I had anticipated. The end result speaks for itself, I hope (especially if you enlarge the image to appreciate all the details).
Every illustration project goes through different phases ranging from enthusiasm as the composition begins to take shape, tedium when dealing with the boring parts of the ‘business’ in the image, then going back to the fun of the fleshing out the main characters which can easily turn into crippling anxiety, when you realize there is still A LOT to complete and refine before you can put on your signature and call it a wrap. It’s all part of the process of dealing with something you began doing because you love it, then noticing the passion getting diluted because now it has become your day job.
Add to that the fact that now making a living out of art has become even more difficult due to the rise of A.I generated imagery, which is something every single creative person on the planet should be concerned with —not because the content generated by these algorithms are any good but because they further highlight the fact that, for most people, it was never quality work what they were seeking.
I guess what I’m saying is that 2024 looks even more daunting than 2023 —which was already a crappy year to begin with. I’m not sure I will be able to keep sustaining myself as a full-time artist/blogger in the future… but I sure hope so, because despite the watered down passion I still love what I do.
Happy new year to you all.
Absurd by Design 