Illustration: advertisement for 'Spam'

I was, lets be clear about this, not very chuffed to be given an ad for 'Spam' as an illustration project. I'm vegan & pro-animal rights &"happy characters" surrounding a can of dead pig frankly galls me, so I chose to do something which fulfilled the requirements of the brief but seemed more appropriate to me personally than the jolly party bollocks on the form.

Hence the illustration: A happy spaceman with his can of pig floating in zero gravity, a happy boar-alien who'll be eating a canful of delicious human & a meat factory production-line machine with a massive claw for chopping bits off mammals.

The astronaut reminds me of some shots from films like Alien, with the obvious connotation of getting eaten by a thing with big teeth. It seemed a logical step for a "happy alien" which was happy at finding a chunk of meat, conveniently packaged in a space suit to keep it fresh, to be a sort of boar or pig, given the contents of 'Spam.' There are quite a few examples of pig-aliens in popular culture, such as the monster Aggedor from the Curse/Monster of Peladon series' of Doctor Who [Link] & I like the idea of humans being put back in their place in the circle of life, as dinner for big things with big teeth.

The "happy robot" was a little less obvious; I had no intention of going anywhere near the anthropomorphised fruit machine on the brief & instead thought it appropriate to use meat-processing factory machinery. The idea of mass-produced dead food turns my stomach in so many knots, so I went for something that looks like it could be used to put a man in a can. It goes without saying that a machine, an inanimate object manufactured to perform a single task, cannot be 'happy', & so I figured someone who was feeling really depressed about the whole butchery thing painted a smiley face on it to cheer themselves up. I hope cheered themselves up so much they used the claw on themselves for fun.

The background was modelled on this photograph: [Link], didn't have time to make it any more detailed & have no intention of going back to it cos this project weas bloody tedious. The robot itself is based on this delightful piece of butchering quipment: [Link], an automated system for chopping animals' legs off.

The original painting is acrylic on W&N Acrylic paper, roughly 20x20cm. The brief stipulated ""no seedy, violent or gloomy imagery", despite the animal-consumption industry being all of those things (udders, man, they're sex bits), so I restrained myself from too much gory spatter & carcasses.

"Plan ahead be sure you can produce the final artwork to the required standard in the time available."

HA.