Around mid-late last year (2013), I was approached to illustrate Jamaica's contribution to an international calendar project. The premise was that each nation selected would submit illustrations based on a local fairy tale/folklore. Being Jamaican, Anansi stories were an easy pick but finding just the right Anansi story wasn't so simple.

 

In the end, the selected story was "Anansi, Firefly, and Tiger". Poor Tiger and his family didn't make the cut for the final illustration, but the two insects did.

 

The agent for the project was:

Above is the finalised drawing for "Anansi and Firefly", showing the two egg hunting in the field. As Anansi is a stranger to the concepts of sharing and consideration, he grabs the eggs as soon as Firefly's light shines upon them, and leaves Firefly eggless and upset (and likely regretting that he ever invited the spider at all)!

I got word later into colouring that the client wanted a second image - one showing a happy Firefly and Anansi's empty sack - to accompany the illustration that I had originally drawn. The motive was to create an Augmented Reality effect in the printed document by using the two illustrations. It took a few tweaks via Photoshop to turn one image into two, but it was done. Best of all, both the agent and the client were satisfied with the outcome.