The Chimp Haven Project: Final Thoughts

Here's the revised layout of the illustrated Chimp Haven project for SB Magazine. This helped me establish the final layout of the illustration.

 I decided to incorporate an illustrated drop cap to lead into the article. (See above)

Here it is: the final illustration. I was really proud of the final result. Matt Beckham did a fantastic job with the coloring and Amy Lyons wrote a great article. In hindsight, I think that there's too much text. I had done many editorial cartoons and illustrations for SB Magazine, but this was the ONLY time that I got the opportunity to illustrate an ENTIRE article. It was a great artistic challenge and a lot of fun.

Chimp Haven: Chimps with Personality

Here's some more artwork that I did for the Chimp Haven article from SB Magazine. These are all various chimps that were used in the final layout. I drew these from various photos of real, actual chimps at Chimp Haven. When I showed the final drawings to the people at Chimp Haven, they actually recognized the chimps and pointed them out by name. I was proud that I captured the chimps' personalities.

Chimp Haven: Inked Artwork

Here's a couple of inked drawings. The chimp holding the stick is not just digging in the dirt with a stick. He doing something called "termiting." The chimps take a long stick and place in down into the ground. At that point, the termites climb onto the stick and the chimps eat the termites. Those are some smart chimps.

Chimp Haven: Banana Smoothies

Here's a sketch and a inked drawing of a chimp drinking a banana smoothie. You might think this is a joke, but according to the Chimp Haven folks, the chimps LOVE to drink smoothies.

Chimp Haven: Rough Lookin' Chimps

Here's a couple more very rough, rough sketches of various chimps. These were some of the very first sketches that I did. The more I drew the chimps, the better the drawing progressed.

Chimp Haven: Rough Draft #1

Here's the initial layout that I did for the Chimp Haven illustrated article. The purpose of this rough layout is to establish the flow of the words and pictures. Consider this to be the first draft of a term paper. After doing this first layout, I determined there was WAY too much copy and the drawing needed to be more prominent. 

Above is the original title card for the illustrated article. I really liked it, but ultimately it was dropped due to lack of space.

To be continued next week!

Chimp Haven: Sketchy-Looking Chimps

Once I met with the Chimp Haven officials, I realized that they took their chimps very seriously. They DID NOT want me to draw their chimps riding unicycles and wearing funny hats (as most chimps are depicted in movies and TV). They supplied me with lots of chimps photos that I used as reference.

Weird Sketch Wednesday: Evil Chimps

Ok. Here's a sketch from my Chimp Haven project that I didn't use. I thought the white eyes made them too creepy looking.

Chimp Haven: Initial Sketches

Unused sketches from Chimp Haven project

These two sketches I've posted today were rejected by the Chimp Haven staff. They wanted to illustrations to accurately depict the chimps housed at the facility. The first chimp was drawn from a reference photo of a baby chimp. At the time, Chimp Haven only had fully-grown chimps. Regarding the second sketch, they felt the chimps were too cartoony.

The Chimp Haven Project

Colors by Matt Beckham

Sketch by Brad Campbell

Back in 2005, I was drawing freelance illustrations for SB Magazine, a local monthly community mag. I've showcased many of those illustrations right here on my blog. Each month, my illustration would accompany an editorial or humorous column written by a staff columnist. 

When it was announced that Chimp Haven, the wildlife reserve for chimpanzees, was opening in Shreveport, SB Magazine planned to feature an article on the topic. Editor Mike Whitehead decided that it would be more interesting to showcase an illustrated article and charged me with the task. 

Working with writer Amy Lyons and colorist Matt Beckham, we produced a 2-page illustrated article. To this day, Mike Whitehead claims that it was one of the most visually interesting articles that was published in SB Magazine.

Over the next two weeks, I'll be posting various sketches, inks and layouts that will lead up to the completed Chimp Haven project.