This year, one of the most fun projects I was able to work on was a set of illustrations for the Toxic Flamingos Discord server. I worked on the project with Craig Mount and when he first approached me with the idea, I could tell this was going to be a really great project based purely on the description of what he was hoping to see.

Let’s dive into the creation process!

After Craig and I chatted about the initial illustration for the discord server, I worked up a handful of compositions. The idea was to show a group of flamingos sitting in a swampy / toxic environment. Each of the flamingos would represent key members of the Discord and various objects would be hidden in the environment which had a history the channel was familiar with.

These are the sketches I came up with:

With the thumbnail sketches, we were able to discuss the strengths of each composition and ultimately decided on creating a Skull Rock the Flamingos would be sitting on. With the composition in place, we moved onto character designs based on the list of items Craig and his crew wanted to see in the scene.

One of the best parts about sketching in color is I can take those base colors and work them into the final piece with little to no guesswork. It was really important to land the right mood and tone with the color so introducing it in the sketch phase really helped give me a roadmap of where the final was headed.

Here are a few closeups which show hidden details in the scene:

With the main illustration in place, it was time to tackle 2 smaller illustrations which would be used on the Discord Channel. By comparison, these were much quicker to produce since so much of the visual heavy lifting was done by the main illustration.

Big thanks to Craig and the Toxic Flamingos for one of the most fun projects I’ve worked on this year! I really enjoyed painting this one and am thankful for those of you who took the time to follow along.