A view into the genesis of an illustration.

I have been entering the delightful myFamicase exhibition organized by Super Meteor every year since 2021 (links to the Meteor site are on the dedicated page). For 2023, my initial idea was to focus on creating a maelstrom of differing influences coming from a drawing table (a very self-referential idea). The very first paper draft was the following:

One of the traditions about my entries is that I always remember it at the very last minute. In 2023 I had essentially one day to do it, and so I started drawing around 10AM, but I failed to find a convincing composition:

Until I made the draft corresponding to the final illustration. There is one big issue though: this composition didn’t leave any room for all the crazy tanks, mecha-bears and other spaceships that I wanted to add. I realized it long after I commited to this draft so the dwindling time didn’t leave me a choice, scrapping my initial idea for a cozy Sunday night type of feel. At 10PM I saved the last version and so it went.

The missing idea was bothering me so I started the draft for the 2024 entry the next week, to break the last minute curse. Because I had already drawn the drawing table in ‘23, I could in ‘24 focus on the maelstrom of different influences. I made a simple draft inspired from the cover of Super Metroid and that was it. I worked a bit on computer, and then did a much better draft on paper again. I asked a friend to make a calligraphy of the title. I loaded this and my drafts into Krita and started to polish everything.

Unfortunately, at this stage I felt unable to achieve the vision and blocked. There were too many issues with colors and values, too many choices to make. With a surplus of work, I forgot about it, with the faint fear that I might not finish it before the new deadline.

I had left the horrible place that is Twitter (X) for a number of reasons. So even if I still had this illustration in the back of my mind, I was not aware of the passing month. By pure coincidence I was asked to check something that made me log in Twitter, and I saw that submissions were already close to done. I had only one day to finish it as with previous years…

Thankfully the tight deadline helped to make quick choices that mostly worked. I worked probably 10 hours on it on that day, which was much longer than expected. One reason being that because of the changes to the line drawing, the fairly low quality scan was unusable so I had to redraw everything.

For once I’m fairly happy with the results, but I’ll try to really finish the ‘25 submission before the deadline…