Amber Baldet: The Daywalker

This cartoon was commissioned by Coindesk for their year-end Most Influential People in Crypto 2017 feature. Check out their writeup on Amber Baldet here.

I confess that I had to do a bit of research on Amber before I figured out how to render her portrait. Fortunately, Coindesk had already given her the “Daywalker” nickname for their feature, so the concept came together quite nicely. Traversing the two worlds of enterprise and open-source crypto is a unique skill, and it’s often difficult to be equally credible in both domains.

My original pitch to Coindesk for this cartoon:

Amber is dressed in Wesley Snipes-grade leather and ballistic nylon. She’s got the signature shades on, but she’s let them drop slightly so she can peer over them at us. Her sword is drawn but she’s got it balanced casually on her shoulder. She considers the audience, but doesn’t pander.

The hard separation between the light and dark areas in this piece is what really makes this image for me. Any day I get to stretch my noir muscles, if ever so slightly, is a good day in my opinion.