The Lupus Monster: A Making Of

I'm always on the lookout for new projects. At the beginning of the year, shortly after New Years, I reached out to Char of Chnar Design Co. about potentially collaborating. I'd been following her account for some time and loved all the lettering she did and the overall vibe of her artwork. She was jumped on board with this idea and the brainstorming began!

Since Char has Lupus, we decided to create a poster that put a light on the disease. Lupus is a challenging disease to live with and because of that, most art related to Lupus is portrayed as sad or depressing (which makes sense), but we wanted to steer away from that to create something that was a bit lighter and more fun. We came up with the idea of me illustrating a Lupus monster that was cute but mischievous and surround him with Char's lettering related to living with the disease.

The project started with a monster sketch. In the beginning, the monster had tentacles that represented the many symptoms, but they proved to be too busy and too difficult to integrate the lettering into. So, I created a new version with arms and legs, then handed that off to Char for her lettering magic.
Char started by lettering symptoms and the effects of Lupus on daily life. Her lettering brought the whole thing to life and gave the poster a more fun vibe.
From there, I took the artwork and reworked the overall layout. Initially, we thought we'd try to fill the space around the little monster, but that was proving to be too difficult, so we came up with the idea of containing the lettering in a shadow that the Lupus monster casts.
After a few more back and forth adjustments, we landed on the finished layout featuring a cute but mischievous monster that casts a shadow containing all the things someone with Lupus lives with.