An AI Odyssey



Cori at Common Ground magazine called with an assignment based on how AI is being used in community associations. A cover and full page illustration were required.
Artificial intelligence is more reality than science fiction these days but no one is quite sure how to harness the technology. Community association boards and managers have a lot of questions and angst over it. Others believe it will improve productivity. How best to proceed?
I was given the working title “An AI Odyssey” intended to play off of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

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Crossed Wires



Leslie contacted me with a cover assignment for the Milken Institute Review. It was to centre around the uphill battle to modernize America's electricity grid. The client was committed to the idea of a snapped (and live) electrical cable spitting sparks.

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Natural To Virtual

Natural To Virtual

Illustration for World Magazine Culture section. About removing people from the “givenness” of the natural world. Technology communicates that humans can transcend the natural limitations of their bodies and circumstances. This can create a kind of cognitive dissonance, making many people feel discontent with their own lives when they have a far “better” vision only inches away from their eyes.

Natural To Virtual 2

Initial pencil sketch

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Computer Chess and the Future of Artificial Intelligence

Computer Chess

I was recently asked by The Milken Review if I would be interested in producing a piece titled, "Computer Chess and the Future of Artificial Intelligence" - a story about chess and how AI is now dominant within the game.

To make the images more relevant I was asked if I could collaborate with AI to create the art. The irony of which was quite appealing. The brief was essentially to depict the opposing forces of artificial intelligence vs that of humanity within a chess/board setting.

Computer Chess

Interesting process! To those unfamiliar with using AI to make pictures, let me just say that the technology has now reached the point of being extraordinary good at producing high quality imagery with minimal input from the user. What it is not so good at however is delivering anything with the more specific requirements of a conceptual image. Accordingly many images were generated before I could find anything that I considered even partially usable.

Computer Chess

The creation process itself is actually very nuanced, much more involved than the current media view would have you believe, and I often found myself thinking how much more straightforward it would be to simply make my own illustrations! Having said all that, the tech did come up with things I would never have thought of and opened up different approaches to how the images could work. Eventually the illustrations developed almost collage-like so these end results are actually a blend of many generations - specifically a blend of the man-made in tandem with the machine-made.

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On The Fly

Fruit Fly

Kathryn at John Hopkins University Arts & Sciences magazine asked me to create a cover and interior illustrations for a major story on humanity's debt to the lowly fruit fly. The article explores how scientists use fruit flies in their research which could potentially help cure human disease.

It was requested that the cover image and interior spread should be related in both look and feel so I maintained the same scientific elements and took different views of the human character. One of the influences coming into play for the main image was Da Vinci's Vetruvian Man although it was scaled back so as not to be too obvious.

Fruit Fly

Fruit Fly


The colour palette evolved via experimentation during the working process. Once I had the combination of turquoise and olive green then everything else fell into place.
The finished illustrations were very well received and the magazine published on November 15th.

Fruit Fly sketch

These are the initial two approved sketches.

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