Neil & Laika, Children's Book Concept Art, Digital Art

Please take me out for a space walk!

I decided to do a children's short story to showcase my skills to potential clients or publishing companies. This is the first fully digital illustration for the story. The story is about a little space boy living aboard a space station or rocket with his mom, dad, and Laika the cosmo dog. I'm calling the kid Neil for now.

Neil spends much of his time on his smart phone or tablet. Laika really wants Neil to spend more time in the real world and take her for space walks more often. In the picture you can see Laika trying to get the boy's attention but he is just glued to that device. What ever will she do?

Neil's character is very much inspired by my dads kids. I got brothers from another mother and they are hooked on phones and PS4. They are complete addicts and I find it a bit alarming how much time they spend playing or looking at phones. it goes well beyond even my own life obsession with computers and games consoles. Lord knows I've played a lot of games but I not hooked on my smart phone. I'm probably too old to want to spend so much time looking at my phone when I can be doing things like digital art on a computer. Their generation are truly jacked into the Matrix. I honestly think they should be made to get out and do more activities or spend more time reading. But I suppose people will become more and more immersed in technology to point where we are totally cybernetic.

So, there is a little social commentary here. I created this illustration with Affinity Designer, an awesome Vector program and competitor to Adobe Illustrator. I hope you like this illustration and would love to get some feedback. Feel free to leave a comment below.

Bye for now :)