Where is Santa? illustration for Washington Post
Christmas 2017 Style section
I was commissioned to make the Christmas Washington Post's Style section in 2017. I've worked with art director Eddie Alvarez to bring to life a very funny and chaotic illustration where you need to search for 24 Santa Claus impostors and, of course, the real one. This illustration earned the 2017 Award of Excellence from the Society for News Design’s 39th annual “Best of News Design™ Creative Competition.”
The illustration was published in printed version and also made available as an interactive seek-and-find game at Washington Post's website. You can play the interactive version here.
Here, you can see a bit of my process. In this case, I started defining, with the art director's collaboration, a list of the 25 different Santa Claus versions I was going to draw. I wanted the readers to have lots of fun each time they find a fake Santa: here you can see all of them.
Once the Santa's list was defined, I started sketching the cityscape. The deadlines for newspapers usually are very tight, so I prefer to only "suggest" some generic crowd drawings and send a list describing some situations that will be drawn better later. Even so, the main Santa Claus' positions and other important situations are already presented in the sketch.
After the sketch's approval, I started drawing the cityscape. When all buildings were done, I started drawing and coloring people. Here you can see a version with a transparent scenario that makes easier to see all the people.
Take a look at some snippets showing more details!
And here is the finished version! You
can play the interactive version here.
Thanks for reading!
