One of the challenges of being a freelance illustrator is that you usually have to come up with the ideas, as well as the art. This is easy enough if it's writing aimed at the general public, but with an assignment like this one, there's a lot of research (and picking of friends' brains) involved. Luckily, I have a lot of computer-savvy friends, so I would sometimes ask them questions over coffee like, "So what's funny about software configuration management? Know any good jokes?". The authors were a lot of help too, and came up with some of the funnier gags... the cover was my idea; I wanted to reference some of the characters from chapter illustrations, and play on some of the geeky jargon (thus, the "Gooey Gnome" in the aft of the ship).
