Rob Dunlavey - Adirondack Life

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Adirondack Life

posted:October 28, 2006

I've been working hard today getting a batch of illustrations done for a small magazine in upstate New York: Adirondack Life. They commission spots frequently but every now and then a larger assignment comes through. This article is about various bits of "local lore". One full page image and three spots (one to go).

Careful there you mischievious little squirrels!

As an animal-obsessed 10 year old (I wanted to be a veterinarian or a zookeeper), I used to be fascinated with wolverines (and badgers). These members of the Mink family are unique and have a reputation for visciousness that borders on the inventive and probably tells more about the humans who study them rather than their actual habits.

This hairy fellow is obviously Mr. Bigfoot. What's odd about him is that he's competing in the Lake Placid (?) Iron Man Competition. One of the bits of "local lore" is the concern that when the 2000+ competitors complete the swimming portion of the race, they tend to urinate in the lake; hence the yellow slick. Biologists have measured a perceptible increase in the lake's acid level but it's uncertain if this is due to human waste elimination. It goes back down right away. The local Chamber of Commerce says it's okay to swim. 'Nuff said!

I like the "Soap Lady". The story I heard is that a woman drowned in one of these really deep and really weird lakes in the region and years later when they recovered her body, it had turned to soap. Okay then�

Thanks for catching the typo Nancy! (It was past midnight when I typed "ELIXER")

This spot is about the French Dauphin Prince (above) who's been rumored to be everywhere including upstate New York. I've depicted a dotty old man holding court with the skeptical but polite squirrels. According to Wikipedia, "The Dauphin was the heir apparent to the throne of France under the Valois and Bourbon dynasties." The Prince that the legends of the "Lost Dauphin" is Louis-Charles XVII was the eldest son of King Louis XVI an Marie Antoinette. The Royal family was captured in 1793 and imprisoned. Research indicates the the Dauphin probably dies of tuberculosis in prison. The rumor was that he escaped and fled to North America. That's one rumor at least. More details here. Hitting The Bottle: I like to do this sort of thing from time to time: render, render, render. Not a whole lot of concept going on here.
The bottle was templated in Freehand and then I made a quickie 3-d model in an old version of Adobe Dimensions. I then designed the label in Freehand and pasted it into Dimensions so I could map it to the body of the bottle. Then I do a ridiculously huge amount of cleanup after pasting the Dimensions postscript code back into my Freehand file.
But, like I said, this nerdy stuff is just the ticket sometimes. I was able to catch the World Series game while completing it.