As stated in the last post, I was lucky enough to get another commission from New Scientist. The development was completed before Christmas, but wasn’t published until the last week leading up to Christmas. This is the spread in the magazine, which has been rotated to fit into the flow of the text.

The design was formed around the idea set in the article that ants are very brave creatures, and are able to help their fellow ants who maybe in distress. The art piece followed the notion that, also due to their names, soldier ants are fierce and gallant warriors. The art director at New Scientist, Craig Mackie, suggested in the briefing that the figure be set up in a suit of armour. Wanting to maintain a little evidence of the exoskeleton that the ants have, I designed the piece to have half armour, in order to reveal the limb structure. Which also was anthropomorphised, to make more readable as a warrior figure.

After some play, the piece was set as such. You can see the full rendering and process over at the Behance site, where the project is laid out. Follow this link to the piece.

copyright © Rob Snow | creative 2013