Flip O’Grady was a chimpanzee of
mature years and unusual intelligence. He stood a full four feet
tall. He was employed as a penny-flipper at the “Probability
Division”; it was under the directorship of Doctor Vonk, and so was
Flip.
--R. A. Lafferty, “ Jack Bang's Eyes”
Upon reading Jack Bang's Eyes, I had
intended to draw a full characterization of Flip O'Grady, coin in
hand, peering at the reader with a hunched back and a knowing smirk.
But then while doing some fast and fortuitous research on visual
representations of probability I came across this outcome map of a
coin toss. To me the map already looked like art. The shift from a
full character to just a hand came as a means of adjusting to the
pyramidal shape but also to help focus the viewer on the flipping of
the penny.
The finished piece was created partly
in vector and partly brushed into the computer.
