The Transformation of an Illustration

For my Illustration Studio final, I was assigned to create an anti-smoking PSA. This was an interesting and weird assignment for me, a smoker.

I decided to build the PSA around the amount of money the government receives annually from cigarette sales. With US government symbolism and my own style in mind, I initially planned for the PSA to be rife with Masonic symbolism and to look very sinister. Here are a few of my ideations from that point:

I thought that cigarettey pillars with cancerous mouths would make a nice touch to the imagery

I brought these ideas to my Professor, and he said that they were too esoteric. I reworked my ideas into something more broad (I HATE doing that) and came up with this basic composition:



I wanted a insignia to be the main image. I reworked this composition (it felt too boxy), scanned the ink drawing I made of the Eagle seal, added some texture, designed the text, then put it all together and colored it in Photoshop. He is the final result: