You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try.

These are a few examples of illustrations I made a few months ago for a commission. 

The brief was to design a set of characters - Mr and Mrs Farmer, their son Junior, Grandpa, Mrs Farmer's friend and Mr Farmer's colleague, who all discuss the work required of a pharmacist, and what this entails. 

The client stipulated that they didn't want the characters to have any racial resemblance "to avoid an awkward choice". They wanted four double page spreads to convey four conversations between the characters.

I sent the characters, along with a storyboard rough to the client, after which they gave me the green light to continue. That led to these illustrations:

After they saw these illustrations, they changed their minds. Now they wanted green silhouettes based on stock photography instead of illustrated characters. And they needed them by the next morning. Really, I should have told them to find another illustrator at this point - I felt quite depressed thinking I would have to put my name to something so far removed from my own ideas. But I really needed the money, so I was in a bind. I duly sent over these images:

Surprisingly, given that I was asked to use stock photography, they found the silhouettes too "catalogue pose". The woman was too slim for their liking and because she was a pharmacist she wasn't supposed to be wearing jeans. Now they were asking for an illustration of Grandpa and Junior, which they wanted to be "generic yet stylised". It would have been much more helpful if they had sent some sample images of what they thought "generic yet stylised" meant. I sent over this illustration:

After this shocking image, they cancelled the project.

I didn't feel that I was taking huge risks - I was trying to create images that people could relate to - women having tea together, a boy playing with a ball with his grandad.

The client was asking for Grandpa to have a walking stick and for Junior to be in a wheelchair and for the main character Mrs Farmer to be overweight, and for none of the characters to have a racial identity. They were so afraid of offending people, and I found this really sad. I'm sure that people with disabilities don't need characters to be disabled for them to relate to them. And it is terribly patronising to expect a white person to fail to identify with the thoughts and ideas of a black person.

More Paper Shredding...

(The next installment of storyboards...)

Generations later, on another dark and misty night, across the land echoes the haunting sounds of a wailing baby - or is it? Lets follow those echoes to the maternity ward of the Slice Splice and Dice Hospital where something out of the ordinary has just been born...

(*LOGO: Meat cleaver and samurai sword in a cross shape hover over a pair of cupped hands holding the Dice of Fate ('Dice of Fate' written in a scroll above them). Skull speared on top. MOTTO: 'Will this visit be your last?' All the doctors are skeletons, pirates and ghosts in white coats.)

Doctor Clive McDougal, Captain of the Hack Trap Belle:

Don't you worry Mrsh Crumble, you're in good handsh! Tell me aboot your diet if you pleash...Och, jusht wait a wee shecond there

Dr Clive McDougal: Ahh, thah's behtter, been troubling me for weeks! Now, have you consumed anything oot o' the ordinary during your pregnancy?

Mrs Crumble: Out of the ordinary you say? Why... no, not at all, only our traditional meal of shredded paper each night... It's been in the family for generations!

Mrs Crumble:...ever since Great Great Grandfather Crumble invented it accidentally in a serendipitous stroke-of-genius cookery/craft book mix-up!

Dr Clive McDougal: Ehhh. You do realise thah paper is completely devoid o' the slightest nuance o' nutrition?


Mrs Crumble: You cannot question tradition, Doctor McDougal! Traditions must be revered and respected-

Dr Clive McDougal:I am sorry to inform you that this is nae o' of them!

Dr Clive McDougal: It appears your son has...
...evolved.
Dr Clive McDougal: I hypothesise that your traditional dish o' Papier Mache a la Mode has altered the very genetics o' your child,


really rather...
radically!
Dr Clive McDougal: This child is a hopeless case!
Dr Clive McDougal: All the boy will be good for is doing away with your unwanted confidential papers.

On this note, the Doctor presents Mrs Crumble with her product - a whirring, mechanical beast of a thing!

Dr Clive McDougal: Your child, Mrs Crumble. What are you intending to call him?

Mrs Crumble: Well, we were thinking a nice respectable name like...Edwin Horatio Issac the Third. [pause]

Mrs Crumble: Ahh... but that doesn't seem appropriate now, does it dear...?

Mr Crumble: No, absolutely not, no, no. I think we have to allow the technology to guide us here, so it seems to me, we only have one option. The Paper Shredder Person it is!