After my Grandma Went to Altamont illustrations that I produced in Affinity Designer, I was looking for a new subject matter to put the program and myself to the test. Originally I wanted to do an old-time, pulp magazine cover similar to The Shadow or The Spider, Master of Men, and I still want to chase down something like that, but it was a struggle. Then I ended up poking around some sketches and doodles I did in Designer back when I first got it. I opened up a file that had a detective-looking character that I had played with, abandoned and forgot. I started playing around with it again, and Szpieg was the result.
Szpieg is Polish for spy. I thought the word spy being only three letters long would be kind of boring and wouldn’t fit the space too well so I looked for a foreign word that looked more interesting. I was going to go with the French espion, but the word szpieg looks and sounds so much more interesting. Dziękuję, Poland!
Originally, I was going to go with the Polish word szpiegować which looks and sounds fantastic, but further research revealed the word to be a verb. Szpiegować means to act as a spy, and I needed a noun. I knew some stickler out there would give me grief over my mistake so Szpieg it is!
