Back in November 2020 I was contacted by Austin Kelmore to illustrate his article about crunch in the games industry. The article is still not available but it shows many of hte problems in an industry with little regard for worker’s rights and conditions while giving tools for overcoming tricky situations like entering crunch or its consequences.

With a total of six illustrations for the article that had to accompany or visually aid the text, I wanted to build a narrative so I centered the illustrations on a character: David Bowlie, a bowl-headed folk.
As the topic in hand is not quite so cheery and there’s no way to embellish labour exploitation, I used monochrome, dark settings contrasted with RGB/HEX palettes, fully saturated or more pastel, depending on the topic at hand.
Then sharp edges and a reminiscence of low-poly 3D to make it unsettlingly friendly, kinda like Happy Tree Friends episode directed by David O’reilly. Glitched patterns and textures to give it a more digital feeling.