Heart of Gold Process

Here’s an early preview of my next Hitchhiker’s Guide illustration for Picture Book Report, which goes live tomorrow. It’s my take on the Starship Heart of Gold. I’ll write a bit more about the illustration itself later, but I wanted to share some of my process and inspiration in a separate post.

I’ve been collecting photos of vans, campers, and RVs in my digital morgue file. There’s something wonderfully absurd about these big, chunky vehicles with speedy-looking decals and graphics printed on them — like a fat man wearing a sporty track suit.

Even though, in the book, the Heart of Gold is described as being pure white and shaped like a running shoe, I thought it seemed like the perfect opportunity to use some of these photos as reference. Suddenly a spaceship inspired by camper vans seemed only natural.

As particularly genius as I thought this all was, a horrible thought occurred to me after finishing the illustration. There was a reason that a spaceship that looked like a camper seemed so inspired.

I had just ripped off Spaceballs.