Subtraction.com

Illustrate Me for May

It took me a little while to get this together, but I’ve just uploaded the May 2006 entry in my ongoing “Illustrate Me” project, which I debuted last month. As a refresher: at the end of each month I’m inviting one illustrator to create artwork to illustrate at least three of the posts I wrote in that month. The only stipulations are that the piece must be black and white, and it must feature the title and dates of the posts it’s representing.

Panel by panel. Below: The first three panels from Max Riffner’s entry for my May 2006 archives.

There’s a height and width limitation, too, of course. But for May’s entry, created by the superbly talented Max Riffner, a taller display area seemed to be called for. Max decided to create an illustration that pays homage to “Twenty-two Comic Panels that Always Work,” a seminal piece of comic art created by the legendary Wally Wood. At first, Max had squeezed in the seventeen panels that you see in the final drawing into the 250 pixel tall standard height that the previous entries had used, but that amount of space seemed to be a disservice to the artwork, so we expanded it to a much taller 520 pixels. I think it looks fantastic.

In case you hadn’t already, I also encourage you to go back to the six months’ worth of Illustrate Me entries that were posted in May. Just keep hitting the ‘Previous’ button in the top navigation from any monthly archive page, or you can jump to them from this list:

Also, to any illustrators out there: I’m always looking for volunteers for future months, so drop me a line!

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