...for a quick contest entry. The New Yorker just recently wrapped up their third annual "Redraw Tilley" contest (Eustace Tilley is the New Yorker's logo guy – if you go to the contest site, you'll see what he looks like). I found out about it so close to the deadline that I was afraid I wouldn't be able to get an entry in under the wire, but fortunately I did. No word on the winners yet (they can pick up to 12). But check out the other entries – sure, there are some not-so-professional attempts, but there is also a lot of great art there as well. There's even some that weren't drawn so well, but were fantastic ideas. My favorite in that last category is the one of Tilley as Batman. If that had been rendered better, and the batsignal had been shining where the butterfly usually goes, I would have picked that one for a winner.
And now a quick rant about professionalism. The one thing that bugs me is how many pieces are entered multiple times, with tweaks or color changes or titles added later. In my opinion, you ought to get it to a complete finish first, and not swamp the contest pages with revisions or slightly different variations (in particular, the one hailing the cab, in I-lost-count-of-how-many-variations, really annoys me). I say, make it as good as you can, and just post it already. Overly cranky on my part, I know, but that's the illustrator in me. If you've got an illustration client, you don't hand them a dozen versions of the final and say, "I don't know, which of these do you think is okay?" That's comp stuff – not finals.
Enough ranting – back to my entry. This isn't totally off the Hansel and Gretel theme I've got going here. I came up with the idea as I was thumbing through my sketchbook, trying to find an unused page, and passed by my witch sketch for the story. I liked the idea of Tilley as a witch so much that I forget what I was going to sketch if I had found the blank page first.
