Metamorphosis

Alex Mallis's concept for "Becoming" was "a four-panel subway campaign where an ordinary New Yorker gradually, quietly transforms into a life-size bird. This would represent an archetype of freedom, perspective, and stillness in motion. Dreamlike. Nobody else notices. Maybe they are distracted. Maybe a small child notices." I ran with this and used assets from past illustration to depict a full subway bench in which the central figure, a woman transforms into multi-colored hawk-like therianthrope.

Some characters on the bench change from panel to panel to indicate a traveling subway car. I try to capture some of the personalities we see as we traverse the city. Also with each panel, the drawing zooms into the woman who is transforming. By the final panel, there are only four seated characters, the woman is fully transformed and the subway appears to be underwater as a fish sees the bird-woman from outside the window. This detail alludes to an old ad campaign from the School of Practical Philosophy.

vector illustration of woman starting to transform into a bird
vector illustration of woman starting to transform into a bird
vector illustration of woman starting to transform into a bird
vector illustration of a young man reaching for a phone

Metamorphosis #2

Continuing with the same concept of a four-panel subway campaign where an ordinary New Yorker gradually, quietly transforms into an animal, the following season of this MTA ad campaign features a young man transforming into a tortoise through the length of the day. From waking up and reaching for his phone to the commute to work, working at a computer, the return home,running up a subway stairwell. As I had proposed a tortoise, the marketing director advised alluding to the sotry of the tortoise and the hare. So I added a white rabbit running up the stairs ahead of the young man now transformed with a tortoise shell.

In the final panel, the young man is fully transformed into a tortoise, meditating in the cosmos, having realized a state of being far beyond a race with the hare.

vector illustration of man transforming into a tortoise
vector illustration of tortoise meditating in space