Late in the summer of 2022, I decided I wanted to start another vector illustration project since I’d been mostly experimenting with Photoshop and Procreate in recent months. At the same time, a band I liked named Nightlife released an EP named Fallback, so i decided to use that as a basis.

For this project, I wanted to build on the illustration style i’d been using for past projects including my Illustration Series SK and Trivium, but from a different angle. With the SK series, I was very focused on negative space and using contrast and shading zones to create an image that was cohesive and clear but still fragmented. When I worked on the Trivium series later, I wanted to incorporate more color and some basic linework to bring it a bit closer to a ‘traditional’ illustration.

With those two building blocks in mind, I decided I wanted to make a more detailed and layered illustration that took the shading approach of SK and incorporated more color like I had in the Trivium illustrations. I pulled the color palette from the cover of the EP (slide 1) and took some style inspiration from the retro font used in the title and the use of halftones and grunge textures for shading to help make these illustrations feel at home with their source material. I then produced a set of 3 illustrations (slides 2-4), one of each band member, combining the influences from my past projects and from the EP cover.

After posting the initial 3 illustrations, the guitarist of the band reached out and asked me to compile them into one composition that he could print out for himself (Slide 5).