This character was drawn for panel 1 on page 25 of my 2009 comic Super Duper Ham: Day One. I always thought of anthropomorphic elephants as being large, barrel-chested people. To break from this stereotype, I decided to make my elephant-man a runner with an athletic build.
The background was drawn for panel 1 on page 35. I had the scene sketched out in a book and I spent an afternoon running around Williamsburg in Brooklyn, photographing buildings and sidewalks. I ended up flipping this image horizontally to get it to work in the panel’s layout.
The two images were collaged together in 2011.