Animalia Gallery Poster for Burning Man 2023
Me and my partner have been long-time participants of Burning Man, and have been running a Theme Camp together since 2006. Our camp has taken on several incarnations, with the most recent being Brainy Bar. Our shade structure, when not being used as a pop-up bar, is a large gallery space where we hang large-scale art in the form of digitally printed vinyl posters (which can withstand the harsh environment). Our gallery selection changes often, and there is usually a tie-in to the overall theme for the Burning Man event. In 2023, the Burning Man Organization chose “Animalia” as that year’s theme.
My task was to update our gallery space with animals in mind. One project was to update the posters with an oversized landscape celebrating all manner of creatures. The scene begins at left in desert climates at dawn, moving to tropical. As the sky changes to mid-day it changes to colder climates and into mountainous terrain, finally ending up in the evening in the deciduous forest. In addition to terrestrial animals, there are flying and swimming critters as well.
The entire poster was created at the actual 9’w x 4’h final size by working in Procreate on my iPad. In order to be able to work at that size and resolution, I only had 4 layers available at any one time which made it an interesting challenge, but one I was able to work out pretty easily. I started by making a sketch for myself so I knew roughly what animals I wanted where and collapsed that into one layer. Then I created the full background, since I knew I wanted it to move across time and location. I was able to work on that in 3 layers, and once I was happy with that I collapsed that into a single layer (of course, saving the layered version out first). I continued to work on each animal individually using the two remaining layers, combining them as I finished each one. Using a watercolor look, with stylized brushes I was able to generate the final poster which was then output as a vinyl banner.
I also saved out individual animals in their environments to use in other ways.
Re-Purposing The Art
The individual creature illustrations turned out so fun, I decided they could become their own pieces of art, and looked for ways to use them. I added some items to the Society6 shop I have had for years, but also wanted to try a different option. By setting up a Printify account, I had access to more products, and even better, I had direct access to listing the items in my Etsy shop. Now people could order items directly, and they would be fulfilled automatically through Printify. Following are just a few of the items created.
Check out my Etsy shop for more info.