Atoms, Motion & the Void: "Sarro's Balloon"

I've been wanting for forever to do a series of illustrations based on my favorite podcast, "Atoms, Motion & the Void", by the brilliant Sherwin Sleeves. This guy is a one-of-a-kind talent: he writes, he voices, he makes music, and he pulls it all together into a singularly haunting listening experience.

The next couple of weekends he's putting up a one-man show in New Hampshire, and I only wish I had the luxury of driving five hours to go see it. But it inspired me to kick out what is hopefully the first in a series of illustrations, this one based on a beautifully sad tale called "Sarro's Ballon".

(iTunes podcast feed here, list of AMV episodes from Sleeves' website here).

UPDATE: Just for shits & giggles, and because I can never leave well enough alone, I took another pass at this incorporating some of the ideas I developed in the later illustrations.