Closed Accounts (1995)

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Closed Accounts appears in the Netrunner trading card game

In 1995, I was 20 and still lived in my parents’ home. I shared a spare bedroom as a studio with my older brother, who was studying Graphic Design at the same time I was in school to be an illustrator. He didn’t go on to a career in the arts, but it was fun working on projects side-by-side when our paths crossed in the studio. Because he was around, I roped him in to model for this piece. He actually modeled for two illustrations for me, and incidentally they were both for Netrunner.

Rough sketch, 4.5x3.5” pencil. I think I did this rough for submission after taking reference polaroid photos, something I normally didn’t do until after rough sketch approval at the time.

Assigned as Security Grid Optimization, this was an attempt at visualizing Cyberspace, the data network in visible form, in a sense. I conceived it as visual streams of text flowing along beams of light. Here, the data continues past a gate of sorts which has closed, keeping this hacker out. His hands are pressed to the invisible barrier as if against glass.

Figure study for Closed Accounts, 8.5x11” pencil

This is an occasion where the rough actually had an improvement over the final. The hand in the rough is a shorthand drawing but indicates that his fingertips are flattened against the barrier more than in the final drawing, which seems to carry some awkward posing anomalies likely present in the polaroid—an occasion where being too attached to your reference can be a detriment. In the posing, his hands pressed tightly against the glass was probably also smooshing the skin around in weird ways, like when you see a picture of a cat sitting on a glass table, from below. It translates weirdly.

Closed Accounts (1995), 9x7” acrylic on illustration board

Apart from that hand weirdness, which I carried through to final, it’s a decent piece for the era. It reminds me that my fatal error in those years was not referencing things more than I did. Consistently, the more I worked from reference, the better the piece usually was. The more I tried to wing it, down to no referencing, the worse. Even with that awkward hand, this was true! Rookie mistakes, and one I frequently have warned young illustrators about in portfolio reviews over the years.