2015 Holiday Manga Preview

(The following is a lightly edited and dramatized build-up to the awesome holiday card I made for a colleague at Apex Environmental Safety and Health Consulting Inc.)

Industrious Hygienist: "Hmmm, let's pop into LinkedIn for a few minutes and see what everyone is doing. A message? I rarely get messages!"

Nira (Message): "Hi Morgan, thought I'd take advantage of your artistic talent and see whether you can design us a Christmas card for Apex with an IH theme. We can have Shutterfly print it for us. Love the blog. Mahalo, Nira."

Industrious Hygienist: Holy fudge muffins, somebody actually reads my blog? No way! Wait, a Christmas card that other people will actually see? Keep it together and sound professional, dang it.

Industrious Hygienist (Message): "Hi Nira! I'd be happy to - how soon are you wanting it? Did you want something like the elves from last year's holiday blog, and do you want it to be a cartoon (I assume so)?"

Nira (Message): "A cartoon. Probably by November 15th."

Industrious Hygienist (Message): "Ok, I'll send you two sketches this weekend and you can let me know which one you like more."

The 2014 Holiday Manga was distributed in four parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. But a Christmas card requires a more focused approach. Thus commences a furious couple hours of thinking, pondering, hemming and hawing about how to do an industrial hygiene themed Christmas card that wasn't incredibly nerdy.

I sent her the following mock up to get approval for the design and content.

Mock up of the Christmas card for Apex Environmental.

Approval obtained, I went to work inking and coloring the manga with special care, since it would be printed and needed to be as crisp as possible. The main character was designed to look like the Principal Hygienist of Apex Environmental, Nira Cooray. The final version is shown below.

Happy Holidays from the Industrious Hygienist and her colleagues at Apex Environmental!

The inside reads:  "Join us in sharing random acts of kindness during the holidays. Mahalo from Apex Environmental." We're excited to see how Apex's clients and colleagues respond to the colorful cartoon. More Holiday Manga coming up in 2015!