In late 2001, I was unemployed and decided to try my hand at freelance work. One of the people advertising in the school paper was someone whose name I have forgotten. He had come up with a "brilliant" new gadget that was going to make him rich. His invention: Notable Notes. Basically, it was a keychain with a roll of paper in it, and a pop-out pen. The idea was that you would always have a pen and paper handy when you needed them. His design also called for artwork to be around the outside of the keychain. That way this keychain could be adorned with a company's logo and handed out. That's where I came in.
He wanted me to create artwork for the keychain. Actually, he wanted me to work for free on the understanding that since I got in on the ground floor, he would pay me residuals every time he made a sale involving my artwork. Naturally, since I thought he was full of crap (and since I can find no mention of his creation through Google, I think I was right), and I was flat broke, I insisted on an upfront payment for my work. We parted ways shortly after I began. He didn't like what I'd made, although he'd given me almost no idea what the hell he wanted, other than "something cool." I think I grudgingly got maybe $50 out of him for probably 15 hours of work. It might not look like much below, but I put a lot into trying to create what I thought he wanted, but we never saw eye to eye.
The first image below is a picture from The Rocky Mountain News about some Harley convention coming to town. Keychain guy said one place he expected to sell a shitload of these keychains was to people who worked boothes at conventions, and since he owned a Harley, I thought images of a biker would be appropriate. I used the image as a template for my work.
