Textbook Piracy

Ahoy! Here's a new spot once again for this week's Village Voice Winter Education Supplement, Class Action. The article by Patrick Arden, to be read here, is about how college students nowadays are circumventing the dreadfully depressing practice, which I can safely say that I do not miss in the least, of having to buy costly textbooks for their classes. Instead, they're able to find and download illegal PDF eBooks of the textbooks online for their tablets/devices.
AD Jesus Diaz contacted me with some fun ideas about really playing up the aspect of pirates. While sketching out ideas, I looked at a lot of pirate illustration done by greats like N.C. Wyeth and Howard Pyle to find the sort of "standards" in pirate characters. I also listened to John Williams' score for Hook extensively, but that's not unusual for me.

I wound up with 6 sketches, many of which I would have been happy to take to final. The first sketch was chosen, with the added idea of putting the mast of a ship in the background behind the pirate and student.

Thanks again to Jesus for an extremely fun gig!

--CKL--