Welp, it happened! The big project I’ve been beavering away at for the last couple months just went live. It’s a comic for Google about a new field of research called federated learning, and you can read the whole thing here.
There’s a lot to talk about with this gig. I got to expand my understanding of how cartoonists can get paid to leverage their skills for big corporate clients. I also got to work with legendary cartoonist Scott McCloud, arguably the grandfather of informational comics, who’d been brought on as a consultant to help adapt all the complex information we’d been given into a viable script. (Scott’s done a couple other comics for Google in the past.) There were meetings and company policies and people used the word “synergy” in conversation without irony. The whole thing was fascinating. I took two trips to the Google offices in Seattle to get blasted in the face with information so I could turn it into something accessible, accurate, and educational. It was definitely a design-by-committee experience, and while there were some challenges trying to balance storytelling and technical truth on a very tight deadline, I’m really proud of what we produced. I think it does a good job of explaining something I would’ve never otherwise learned about. Plus there are dog jokes.
For those of you pledging to get behind-the-scenes details, I’ll be writing a more detailed post with some process art and financial information. This job is the most lucrative freelance contract I’ve ever taken, and I want to talk about how that’s felt (Complicated! Emotional! Empowering!) and what other folks can do to pursue similar gigs.
If you’re new here to the Patreon crew, thank you so much for signing up. I appreciate all of you very much indeed.
<3
L
