Jailbirds..
All this bird talk! - I thought I would mould together a couple of old blog entries about some older, but interesting, illustrations created on a bird theme. These images still make me smile, far more because of how they came about than the process of actually creating them.
The brief for the image was very explicit: full colour, fully rendered, A4 image, prepared for print media, no typography. The image was to communicate an idiomatic phrase in an understandable and original way.
I was allocated the expression “A Little Bird Told Me…”and I provided a number of solutions to the brief. But, much to my frustration, when I pitched the ideas, very few people seemed to guess it. Even the client was also confused as to why people didn’t seem to understand what the saying was. (We eventually pinned it down to the fact that many people didn’t even know the saying - even when told!)
I ditched my original idea of hard-core budgies for something more literal and used the concept to develop my digital painting skills in Photoshop. It seemed something of a backward step but the budgie idea fuelled an image of personal indulgence.
When creating the first character, I thought it would be interesting to have radically different birds in the line up to add a comedic effect. That concept then developed into a pastiche of the poster for Brian Signer’s The Usual Suspects.
The police line-up scene has become an iconic moment in cinematic history and there are many tributes and pastiches of it. It was great fun developing the different characters and matching birds to them. The word play in the final image always raises a smile for anyone who knows the movie.
I wonder - were they working for the Kestrel Soze?
