BSA Polaris Poster

Toward the end of June I got an email from the Boy Scouts of America wondering if I had time to do a presentation poster. I have a great history of working with the BSA over the last ten or twelve years on projects for Boys' Life Magazine and the scouts in general, so I was excited to take this one on.

concept sketches guided my photo shoot

The time frame was fairly tight and I had other projects to get off the table before I could start. The premise was to create an image of adventure that could be coupled with words from the scout oath or motto. The kicker was that it needed to feature a machine partnering corporation Polaris. I set up the photo shoot, scratched out a few idea sketches, lined up my model and went to town. The BSA worked closely with me to coordinate contact with the local Polaris dealer and set up a photo shoot with the specific youth sized ATV that was to be featured.

I had one shot to get all the info I needed, so I planned for three or four different options.Jeff Schoetz at Plaza Cycle was awesome and got my model all geared up with the proper safety equipment and we rolled the machine up on a ramp outside. It took some serious imagination to picture this out in the wild, but I got some good angles and managed to cobble together a view that I think works.

 Because of the quick turnaround, I used the photos to mock up different option and one (actually my favorite) was selected. After approval, I had about one week to digitally paint the poster image and get it to the designer for the type application. Brady Tauzon and Bryson White from Weld were great to work with and I think Brady nailed the type treatment on this one and we sent it off to get printed. BSA had to have framed copies in Minneapolis five days after I delivered the art to Foundation Arts for the ceremonial presentation to Polaris executives. Gina, Jared and the team at Foundation Arts did an amazing job and turned the printing and production around in two days! This project was one of the quickest turnarounds I have done and yet one of the smoothest. Everyone kind of understood that it was a tough schedule and all the steps just fell smoothly into place. Not only that, I already got paid. Talk about a great project! Thanks to the guys at Weld, everyone at BSA and Foundation Arts for making this one such a joy to work on. Can't wait for the next one.

Dragon Mountain Redux

Last year I did illustrations for a Boys' Life fiction article called "The Secret of Dragon Mountain". It was a cliffhanger story (quite literally as you can see from the main scene below) that readers were invited to finish. Well, a winner was chosen and I was asked to do another illustration to correspond with the winning entry. In the scene, he looks at the photos from his recovered camera. Luckily, my model lives in the neighborhood and it has not been long enough for him to get to outgrow the role.

It will run in an upcoming issue along with the complete story and previous illustrations. Thanks to Kevin Hurley, current BL art director and Scott Feaster, previous AD who was fantastic to let me work with Boys' Life so much in the past. It's great to have wonderful clients.

See Dragon Mountain sketches here
And also here