WIRED - HAVILAND TUF

I have a spot illustration appearing in the tablet edition of Wired magazine this month. The illustration is a rendition of cult science fiction character Haviland Tuf. I had never heard of Haviland Tuf before doing this illustration, but it is my understanding that this character has quite a large following among science fiction fans. Haviland Tuf appeared in several short stories written in the mid 70's to the mid 80's by Game of Thones author George R. R. Martin. These short stories were then collected together into a single book called Tuf Voyaging in 1986. Due to the success of Game of Thones, and the increased interest in Martin's work, Tuf Voyaging is being republished (the first edition in 10 years).

This was a fun little gig, as I found the Haviland Tuf character pretty interesting and unconventional.  He also hasn't been visualized too many times before, so I felt free to give him my own interpretation.

Thanks to Gus Wezerek at Wired for the input and the opportunity.

WIRED - CYOA

Here is an illustration I did for the latest issue of Wired magazine. It was for an article on the old Choose Your Own Adventure series of books. My older brother had a stack of Choose Your Own Adventure paperbacks that I used to read through when I was a kid (and my Dad still has them at the house last time i checked). I really enjoyed them back then, so getting a chance to work on something related to the series was a pleasure.

As I was drawing on my childhood memory and emotion, my original sketches for the illustration were much more playful (as seen below), and put a lot more emphasis on the books, and elements from the article. But Wired was looking for something more akin to my "EK" illustrations and wanted something a little more ambiguous as they felt this would appeal more to their mature readership, so we ended up with the image above, with it's restrained colour scheme and more serious forms. In the image the concept of choice is represented subtly, and is somewhat overshadowed by the sense of danger. We also decided to bleed the image out of it's frame to allow it to merge with the body of the article.

This issue is out on the shelves (and in tablet form), and as is the case with Wired, is filled with cool and interesting stuff. Big thanks to Gus Wezerek for his thoughts, input and the gig!