Here’s a recent job I did for The Environmental Defense Fund. The art director, Christina Baute, wanted a cross between early Roy Lichtenstein and the mid-20th Century comic books that inspired him.

It was a fun piece to do. I created the characters in Poser, which I often do  to get a feel for positioning, proportions, etc. The girl’s hair proved to be the hardest part of the illustration, getting that feeling of flowing shadows and highlights with only solid black and yellow was tricky.

I created the image in Illustrator and placed the speech bubble and the text on separate layers. The people at EDF hadn’t quite decided on what the text should say so this allowed them the ability to switch my dummy text with their final copy. I made several suggestions for fonts that I thought would work for the 1950s/60s look and they agreed with my recommendations: Sedona Script for the main title and Lybinky for the speech bubble. Sedona Script has a nice ornate 1950s flourish to it and Lybinky has a more hand-drawn feel than the common Comic Sans font.

It’s always gratifying to do work for an organization that does good in the world like the EDF.