Finally revealing this illustration, featured on the latest LitJoy Crate puzzle in their August 2020 Box, Elemental Magic! Inspired by Strange the Dreamer by the great Laini Taylor, featuring Lazlo, Sarai and the godspawn crew, Ruby, Minya, Feral and Sparrow!
🦋
This
concept here sort of derailed a bit, as I had meant to embed the
godspawn crew into the pockets of color you would usually see on a moth
or butterfly’s wing. I’m not sure if it completely comes across here,
but it’s one of those situations when you work on something for so long
that it takes off into its own direction and your original ideas begin
to blur. But the idea of Sarai having to shoulder the guilt of having a
freedom that her spawn siblings can’t experiences is where these
symbolic moth wings emerged from. She carries them and their dreams with
her while she frolics in the nightmares of humans.
🦋
This
illustration has such bittersweet memories for me as, in addition to the
ADSOM jackets, it was the second of three major projects that I lost in
the 2020 Rosie Computer Corruption / Crash. This one got hit so hard
that even the project folder was disintegrated. Luckily I was able to
refer to the concepts I had sent over to Litjoy via email, but had to
reconstruct a good portion of the illustration to get back to where it
was.
🦋
But I’m so happy with how it turned out - the color
palette is once again reminiscent of stained glass and I love how the
textures of the smoke, plum tree and wireframe drawings of the spawn’s
dream items almost look tangible.