This illustration project for Incubis Venture Capital Group, LLC was created entirely in Adobe Illustrator and based on an ancient woodcut of the Roman god Janus. Janus was the god of gates and doorways and of new beginnings. Janus is usually shown in pictures with two faces, one of which looks back at the past while the other looks forward towards the future. This symbolism seemed particularly relevant to the venture capitalist industry, which concentrates on funding new commercial ventures. The client wanted the image to look like a gold and silver coin with the image stamped in bas relief (low relief) in metal. The overall metallic effect was created by creating individual objects shaded with yellow/brown gradients for the gold coin, and light and dark gray gradients for the silver coin. Polished metal has a distinctive look of high contrast gradients, for which Illustrator is  exceptionally well suited.