Client: Storytime Magazine

Project: The Gift of Corn

Storytime is one of the UK’s leading children’s magazines. Their colorful pages depict tales, myths, and legends of the world. It was my great honor to illustrate the Aztec myth of the origin of men.

In this story, the god Quetzalcóatl is tired after many failed attempts to create the human race. With the help of his brother Xólotl, the dog-shaped god, Quetz steals bones from the underworld and creates humans from them, but the plan ends up in defeat since the created humans are very weak and fragile.

He’s about to give up when he notices an ant carrying something shiny and interesting: a maize kernel. Quetz finally makes a strong human race using maize dough to shape the humans, and corn transforms into one of the main grains of Mexican culture, even into the present.

For this project, I went for shiny colors that would be attractive for the kids and I also used Aztec glyphs to create some of the shapes of water, mountains, and clouds.