Balloons containing managers

Okay, so I ran into some older work that I did for Grant Thornton. This "editorial" was supposed to be portraying how one Manager could lead a group of other managers to higher heights, etc. The symbolism is obvious so there is no need to go into explaining that.

This picture, version, whatever you want to call it was weeks in the making. I created so many different hot air balloons (so to speak - as this is supposed to be an office building hot air balloon, which to my knowledge, do not exist just yet) Drawing the building to bow out like that while trying to keep it in perspective was a challenge. I did about five versions of that. The people had to be redone several times. The basket was redone. All of these were seperately shaped and redone. Unfortunately, thanks to the digital age you can accomplish this, but....it takes away so much when "frankenstien-ing" the illustration back together. I use that phrase a lot.
I'm loving the clouds I did. I can't tell you how many total versions we went through. The thing is, I'm really not sure that I even know which version of this was chosen for the final. I drew one aspect of the bird's eye view of the city below. The Production Artist, designer, etc. had cloned the buildings and placed them in a repeated pattern across the bottom. He had done several versions of how to place the one set of buildings I drew for this, not to mention the five other types of buildings. I think the "client" went with a simple, poorly drawn version of the city which was a little disappointing. Dont' get me wrong, I can say "poorly drawn" as I did a quickly harshly drawn version of the skyline with just the outlines, with exaggerated perspective in a wiggly pencil rendering. We also worked on a watercolor version of a simplified cityscape. Once we put that with all of this, it just starts to look strange.