What is this scene portraying? we had to wait until the scientific article was published.

Thanks to Andrea Soriano, Enrico Di Minin, and Ricardo Correia for your trust, at the Helsinki Lab of Interdisciplinary Conservation Science.

[written March 2024] I was commissioned these illustrations for a scientific paper a year ago and now they are in the wild! I will use the chance to describe one of the common pathways to go from idea to figure.

In the paper the authors propose a strategy to integrate online digital data from media platforms into current biodiversity datasets in light of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Check it out: Soriano-Redondo A, Correia RA, Barve V, Brooks TM, Butchart SHM, Jarić I, et al. (2024) Harnessing online digital data in biodiversity monitoring. PLoS Biol 22(2): e3002497. https://lnkd.in/dnjtcJtC

The authors contacted me at the end of February 2023 and 35 days later they had two figures ready for their use. The paper itself has just been published on 15th February 2024 (yes, almost a year later, because scientific publication process is what it is). One figure made it to the published paper and the other has been used for outreach.

This was the process:
📩 Initial e-mail to enquire about my availability and interest.
✍ Meeting (online) with the authors to discuss details (including prices, timing, formats, intended use…). The authors share sketches of the ideas. I have to turn them into illustrations that help readers to get the content of the paper at-a-glance.
🔎 Time to look for background and further context. I browse previous related papers of them to get the gist of their research. Also, the figures have many “scenes” and I need to make sure I am portraying correctly the animals, environments, and events in each scene. I really enjoy digging up the information, I always learn something new.
👩‍🎨 Drafting some ideas. Getting feedback. Drawing the figures. Final comments and corrections. Prepare and deliver final documents. Done!
👍 Congratulate the authors for the publication (I am mentioned in the acknowledgements)