In my last post I showed you 2 of my concepts for the 2011 Good50x70 social awareness poster competition. I knew that simplicity was paramount, so i wanted to develop the toilet concept. The class had other ideas. They insisted I do the child and skull motif.

The problem I faced was that (unless I am doing fantasy or science fiction) I like to work from photographic reference. The images in the collage are not mine, and I had no way to shoot my own photos to work from. I decided to draw something similar in spirit without aping the source material.

The above poster is the result of over 40 hours of work. The child and skull were drawn in pencil and marker, scanned and brought into Illustrator where a line trace was performed. The cell phone in the child’s mouth was replaced with vector constructed circuitry. The bamboo was developed from the font. I tried to contrast the clash of cultures by using broad “Expressionist” strokes on the perpetrator’s skull and finer, oriental inspired, Art Nouveau” lines on the victim.

To my horror, upon handing it proudly to my instructor, she tore it into three pieces!

“You have 3 posters here! Decide which one you want to develop.”

I knew the circuit-board and the skull were not stand alone concepts. I had no choice but to work solely with the child. But that is the subject of tomorrow’s post.