Here are more illustrations for the Icebreakers book I’ve posted about previously here and here. The illustration style was a new one for me, catering to the client’s need for a large quantity of illustrations that were unique for a small budget. Drawing people can be time consuming, but in this case we substituted the painstaking details such as faces, hands and feet for colors and patterns on bendy-bodies that were easy to contort into many shapes without needing to be realistic.

I enjoyed the challenge of this and the project limitations giving way to something I normally wouldn’t try at first glance. The result was a very easy and functional way of drawing characters in an endless variety of personalities.

Another part of this project was creating vocal symbols that, for the most part, weren’t based in a specific language, since Postyr Project travels all over the world with their a cappella group. The spirals, crosses, dots and hash marks serve their pictographic purpose well, and remind me of the difficulty of pronouncing something your tongue is not used to twisting. For example when anybody Danish tries out the word squirrel – it might as well be a squiggly line in a speech bubble. Don’t worry Danes, we can’t say “rød grød med fløde” so I think we’re even.

The first edition of the book is just about sold out, but you can see the authors’ website here for future editions: www.breaktheice.dk.