Merry Christmas to one and all! This week’s cover is of course a Xmas special or do we say FTXmas special? The past week, we saw SBF released on a hefty bail after being at the forefront of a scandal. 

We were all set into the holiday mood while hunting for topics for the cover. Once we settled on the SBF bail story, we drafted a sketch. It showed a father and son outside a toy store looking at the displays, dismayed that they could not afford anything from the shop. Among the displayed gifts, there stands an easel with the photograph of SBF sitting on the lap of Santa Claus who is handing him the bail. If you look closely, you can see that FTX has wrecked the father. Other references that have been included in the artwork are the Otherside NFT, NEWHERE, Lucrese’s artwork. 

In the beginning, I thought I will execute this artwork in a painting style but halfway through, I realized that it was not suitable as it would be hard to depict the expression on SBF and Santa’s faces. Hence, I adopted the style of the popular Tintin comics by the legendary artist Herve. After the artwork was finished I set out to do small animations as the artwork did not demand heavy animated objects. First came the doggo’s tail, then the small objects that are kept on display. As Christmas is all about putting elves to work I employed my girlfriend to do the frame-by-frame animation of the snowflakes while I prepared the AE file and animated the rest.  Once we had finished the artwork I passed it onto Dudly’s den where he did his usual magic and enhance the snowfall and the lights pulsating through the display.

We hope you enjoyed your Christmas and are still in the holiday mood as we enter the final few days of 2022. We must say that 2022 was quite the bear year but we can hope for better results in 2023. One more week to go!