The word of the week over at Illustration Friday is launch. When I think of launching something I tend to think of technology. I immediately wanted to do play on words related to launching websites, software, apps, you name it. Stylistically though, my digital illustrations skew a bit retro, so I wanted to find a fun way to merge the two. I noodled around for a bit and then I found my inspiration on my own home page.

Before launching websites we launched things like rockets and spaceships. It’s a very different kind of launch, and there was no soft launch. Launches came in one flavor. Hmmm… a space launch could tie into the mid-century vision of the future and my own illustrative style.

Eureka! I fused the two and came up with the idea of a Launch Party. A dated 60′s vision of the future paired with an event typically attended by the hipster nerds of Silicon Valley. Ironic juxtapositions all around!

Originally I wanted to have everyone to be in a bubble environment like in the space colonies we’ll all be moving into any day now, but everything felt too cramped here while being too spacious there. So I just opened everything up and made everyone wear space helmets, very futuristic.

Overall I’m not sure how successful it turned out, especially at this size where everything gets lost on the page. I’m still debating keeping the guy in the picture. He was in the original bubble idea but I didn’t sketch him out when I drew the girl and the awesome robot. Putting him back in was more of an afterthought. He looks stiff and out of place. I did a quick gesture sketch on a Post-It note to get the posture down, but I’m still not convinced it worked.

Although it may not be working perfectly as a whole there are some details that I find lovely. The robot caterer absolutely steals the show, and the I really love the faces of the couple.

In the end, no matter how much fun I had coming up with it, it’s going to need more work before it’s done. I’m also not sure what I’m going to do with it when it’s finished. Originally I though I’d have it printed and made into invitations. Wouldn’t it be hilarious to see a mythical hedonistic launch party on the scale of the Dot-Com Era use invites like this? But it would still need to be reworked.

In the end maybe I’ll just do something with the robot. Isn’t he fantastic?