A cougar stretched out on a mossy mixing desk in an orange autumn forest, ravens at the faders and on a rack unit, two raccoons watching from a window frame and a wolf asleep in the corner
Work

Twelve months inside the Creature world.

Client

Self-published

Sector

Art calendar, self-published

Year

October to December 2025

Scope

Illustration, character design, print production

The problem

Deep in the forests of Vancouver Island, an old music studio sits half-swallowed by moss, rain, and roots. Wolves, deer, ravens, and red squirrels move through broken structures and engage forgotten gear. Each month of the Creature Calendar is a snapshot from that world — a bridge between hip hop, wildlife, and the Pacific Northwest forests that raised LiftedPro.

The approach

Twelve months, each built around one Vancouver Island animal running the studio — an owl on a speaker cab, a cougar draped over a mixer — with smaller creatures hidden throughout the scene so there's something new to find every time you look. Every animal is native to the Island, and every one of them belongs to the same studio, working in harmony.

The system

The printed Creature Calendar standing open, showing a winter forest scene above the month grid
The 2026 Creature Calendar being turned page by page, each month showing a different scene from the forest studio
The printed object. 28 pages, saddle-stitched, CMYK proofed.
Two raccoons working a drum pad in the snow inside a roofless, moss-covered forest studio, with a great horned owl perched on a mixing console, a raven at left and a grey wolf sitting beside studio monitors
January. Winter Studio Bass.
A buck with tall antlers standing in the doorway of the ruined forest studio at night in the rain, a raven with wings spread on the mixing desk and a mouse on the wet floor, lit only by the red and amber glow of the consoles
February. Midnight Machines.
A bear cub walking through a shallow stream in heavy rain between a sampler and a glowing reel-to-reel tape machine, with a great blue heron perched on a speaker cabinet under dripping old-growth timber
April. A Grizzly Born on the Isle.
A raven perched on a mossy stump above a sampler with a green waveform screen in a sunlit summer forest, a second raven flying overhead, a bear asleep among the roots and shells scattered in the foreground
June. Sun of the Beach.
A cougar draped across a moss-covered mixing console in a green summer forest studio, with two raccoons at a microphone stand, a blacktail deer looking in through the window frame and a raven at a sampler
August. Green Room Lyricals.
A black bear lying across a large mixing console in golden autumn light with its paws on the faders, two Steller's jays on a synthesiser keyboard, a raven on a speaker cabinet and a ribbon microphone hanging at left
September. Autumn Rhythms.
A cougar stretched out on a mossy mixing desk in an orange autumn forest, ravens at the faders and on a rack unit, two raccoons watching from a window frame and a wolf asleep in the corner
October. Cat in Fire Attire.
Two wolves beside a stack of snow-covered vintage synthesisers in a moonlit winter forest, with ravens on a reel-to-reel machine and an owl perched on a speaker cabinet
December. Winter's Wolf Eve.

The process

  1. Sketch

    Every character started as a pencil sketch, on paper or tablet, working out pose and attitude by hand before any tool touched it.

  2. Generate

    Sketches went into Adobe Firefly, ChatGPT/DALL·E and Google Imagen to throw off a high volume of raw material to pull from, not to hand back a finished image.

  3. Composite

    The generated material got picked apart. I kept what worked and photo-bashed the pieces together in Photoshop, building the final character out of parts, not accepting any single generation whole.

  4. Color

    Coloring was generated separately, then graded and applied into the composite by hand.

  5. Texture

    Realistic textures were generated as reference, sampled into custom Photoshop brushes, and hand-painted onto each piece with a stylus.

  6. Layout

    The full 28-page calendar was laid out in InDesign — grid, typography, date system — built to hold up once it hit CMYK.

  7. Timeline

    Sketching started in late October, and the first test prints went out in mid-December. Built in fifteen-minute to one-hour windows most nights, after a nine-hour sheet metal shift and time with my son.

Result

A 28-page saddle-stitched calendar taken the whole way through production. CMYK proofed, barcoded with a real UPC/EAN, and the date grid built to WCAG AA contrast so it still reads on a wall in bad light. Printed in a limited run of sixteen. None remain.

What I'd change

The idea came together too late in the year, and I used the short runway I had left to test whether I could get a calendar out before Christmas at all. What I'd do differently: start earlier, run preorder ads well ahead of the season, and have every calendar already shipped to customers by November instead of still testing prints in December.

Need a launch cut or a sound to go with it? That gets built here too. The sound

Next project

Identity for a cross-genre festival in the BC interior, built around a cast of animals.

Read the case study