{ Getting the Gears } ~ The best laid schemes of Mice and Men

My illustration for Theresa Wallace's article in Ottawa Magazine's Autumn Edition based on the subject of the controversial 'Phoenix' pay system:

"Stories of federal workers losing their homes and wiping out their savings because of the Phoenix pay system are now legendary in this city. Thousands have been affected and continue to be so. It remains a mystery why a system with such deep flaws was implemented — and why these flaws haven’t been fixed — but we know that repairs to Phoenix have now cost more than its $309.5-million purchase price."

The Art Director, Jane Corbett, wanted to avoid any obvious metaphors related to 'phoenix' and such, so I pitched the idea of cogs and gears as a symbol of organized systems and technological improvement but people being trapped in the machine.

This was done using digital software.  A vector-based program was used to create the cogs; then a bitmap program was used to draw the more organic figures in the midst of those machines.  

For the complete article read Burned by Phoenix