An Anthem Christmas

Here's a Christmas card I made for Anthem Creative Groups. The cards themselves have Anthem's logo on the bottom right.

When asked to sketch ideas for the card, I speculated as to what kind of character would be the most fun to draw.  A snowman was the first thing that came to mind since, they don't really have a "standard look".  Their facial features, limbs, and adornments can be made out of anything. Eyes can be coal, buttons (as shown above), simple indentations in the snow, or just anything remotely round.

Like scarecrows, you can pretty much just dress them anyway you want. Since most people would use old, worn out clothes for that sort of thing, snowmen and scarecrows tend to look a bit like hoboes. I think what I was going for was a "charming English tramp" sort of thing. Dickens-esque, if you will.

As for the concept, I just sketched out the first humorous situation involving a snowman that came to mind.

"A Snowman roasting a marshmallow with a really long stick."

If figured that it'd be something people would find cute and amusing. Something they'd look at and go....

"Hey, well alright. Looks like the snowman's roasting himself up a marshmallow there. Ha haaa, but he's got that long stick cause he doesn't wanna melt. Ha ha ha! How 'bout that? "

It's funny, A lot of my coworkers the interpreted the situation as being very grim. The more I thought about what I drew, the more I started to see it myself.

"A Snowman with wooden arms, sitting on a dry log, in front of a dry tree, holding a branch amidst a roaring fire."

One begs the question. Is he greeting hello, or bidding farewell?

In any case, he can't even eat that marshmallow. What's going to do with it? Even if he had to bodily means to swallow it, it would melt his insides.

Maybe it's like the elephant man. He knows that sleeping on his back with his head flat will kill him, but he just wants to sleep like a normal person. Perhaps the snowman wants to experience his first and last moment of normalcy (normalcy in terms of what "real" people can do). He has the long stick not to avoid the fire, but to savor the experience longer before the fire reaches him.

I often wonder if I'm incapable of creating something without morose undertones.