Peter is a creative person and a problem solver. He has a cartoony style to his drawing, and doesn't get to draw as much as I do as his real role is working as a commissioning manager at Manchester City Council, in the Directorate for Public Health.
Last year he drew a series of images for a project highlighting 'the first 1000 days of a child's life'. Focusing on a young couple having a child, it tells their story in relation to the services provided by Health and Social Care providers in Manchester, so anyone in that position can find out about the support they can get - in a way that is visual and engaging.
When it was decided to turn this into the Director of Public Health’s annual report, I was approached to convert the original black and white hand-drawn artwork into digitally coloured PDF. I also supplied architectural and background for the cover and double spread.
The original artwork required photographing, additional artwork was done digitally with a combination of wacom tablet and clip studio pro, a package that specialises in creating comic book style illustration.
I was initially a bit worried about some of the conversion process, as some of the original artwork was very big A2 in size. Reducing down would loose some of the detail. Fortunately the chunky line work (Peter's signature style) was perfect and the images could be reduced well, and made the colouring process a breeze.
It was a great opportunity to finally collaborate on something together, and the feedback from children’s health and social care professionals has been incredibly positive. You can download the PDF report here.
You can see more of my illustration commission work on this site, or if you're thinking about a commission email me at john@rocketsteps.co.uk
