I was asked by Sky/Bavaria Fiction, the producers of the Das Boot TV series, to help the art department out by designing and producing an emblem for the conning tower of the titular submarine.
In theory, this might seem like a simple task but the brief had the complication that the drawing needed to look period-correct, and as if it had been drawn by an artistically amateur submariner.
To accomplish this I hit the history books and immersed myself in order to try and distill down the techniques used by the submarine crew artists.
After trying many different emblems, from devils to sharks to octopuses holding torpedos, the production settled on the red scorpion motif. The final design was then hand painted onto the sets and the life-size submarine built for the external shots.
