Bummer

Everything's good in Nico-land, but Dad got hit with a bit of bad news. The illustration above had been slated to run in the upcoming issue of the New York Times Magazine but got cut at the last moment. My piece, along with 3 others, got whacked in a late night editorial killing spree.

I've been wanting to get into the Magazine since, well... always. I've been in different sections of the paper twice already, but haven't yet made it to, what I consider to be the brass ring of the place, the Magazine. Except I did... and then I didn't. I had been invited, along with 14 other illustrators to submit our different takes on the future of the car. I guess only 10 made it in.



Between the sketch phase and the final illustration some changes were made. In my original sketch I played off a few of the ideas in the article: the idea of drivers being able to resell the electricity generated by their hydrogen fuel cell equipped cars, the idea of "plug-n-play" modular cars and the idea of stripping down excess weight for better fuel economy. I imagined how it might play out here in Japan. I imagined some enterprising folk would trick out their cars into essentially, mobile power plants. Right now people sell all kinds of the oddest stuff out of reconfigured vehicles, everything from hot, sweet potatoes to laundry poles to kerosene gas. Selling electricity didn't seem like too far a leap. The NYTimes folks asked me to simplify it a bit and place it in an American context... no problem. I just wish it had made it in. Ah well, maybe next time.

Tags: mckibillo | illustration | hydrogen | fuel cell