Turtle Boy Awards

The prelim fax.

Many years ago then WoMag editor Mike "Warrior" Warshaw asked me to whip up a design for their annual Turtle Boy Awards.  Said design should mimic the look of Dr. Seuss while encompassing the more interesting aspects of the Turtle Boy statue in the Worcester Common from which it gets its name.

For those of you not in the Woo, the statue features a boy and a turtle frolicking-- that's all I'm going to say.

So we agreed on a price and I whipped up a sketch and faxed it over.  It was a quick sketch, it was a sketch designed to give M Warshaw an idea of the direction I wanted to go in.

Warshaw will certainly call me and let me know I'm mis-remembering it here, but this is how I recall it.

I was in the middle of a particularly busy season of freelance art so when I didn't hear right away from Mike I just pushed on with other projects.  Imagine my surprise when I not only received my check but the FAX Sketch ran in the magazine as the finished design!  I was horrified and called Mike to explain-- he was gracious enough to let me send him a real final so I wouldn't have to look at this doodle in print.

The Real Illustration

The final was more polished.  Mike was a little concerned about Turtle's face-- he liked the happier Turtle face in the prelim, but I argued that this one was a heck of a lot funnier.  Initially I had Boy's hip visible behind the turtle and he agreed to go with the look of shock if I could hide the hip to make it look less obvious that they were frolicking.

I was cool, and either then Art Director Christopher Miller or I put together this cover which ran with the announced winners.  Mike and I looked at the possibility of having 3D award statues created based on the design and all was good in the world.

Mike left the magazine to move on to the bigger world of The Boston Globe and Noah Bombard took over as editor.  Noah was a good guy and we got along fine.  But once again they ran the old design.  I called Noah and explained-- he told me he would correct it and use the right one.

Noah left and Jim Keogh took over, and once again the wrong Turtle appeared.  I've since given up and am just glad that my name doesn't appear anywhere on the design.