I Think I Can Fly

This is a project set by Blanket magazine to create a response to the line ‘I think I can fly.’ I looked at several different approaches but finally settled upon illustrating a short story I found simple entitled ‘balloon boy.’ It’s the story of a young boy who’s parents were hot air balloonists and one day the balloon escaped and… the boy was nowhere to be seen. Convinced the boy was inside the basket news soon spread around the world being broadcast on television stations as far away as the Middle-east and Asia. It was then discovered that the boy was not in the balloon but instead was hidden in the attic of the family home, afraid of being punished by his father for earlier misbehaving. Eventually the whole tale was revealed to have been carefully planned by the boy’s father in an attempt to become famous. This was a short one-week brief I set myself, treating this brief similar to my earlier responses to the Don’t Panic posters. The naïve styling of the balloon is to reflect the child’s naivety, this is contrasted by the sharpness of the red balloon, the misregistration of the circle representative of the lie of the parents.