The premise for the commission is as follows.
Quoting from the art director’s email:

“The Fox TV show "24": I suggest doing this one in the style of Ghost in the Shell: SAC. Jack Bauer is a cybernetically-enhanced supercop dealing with cyber-terrorism; if we copy the look of GITS SAC we can get a relatively realistic-looking Keifer Sutherland. In the picture, Keifer should be leaping away from a huge explosion that's coming out of the side of a super futuristic skyscraper, and you can see the city beneath him as he flies through the air. He's holding a gun and is dressed in a tank top, cargo pants and combat boots, a'la Batou from GITS. Surrounding the left side of his face is a segmented metal plate with a lens in place of his eye, with a little red LED light to the left of that. There's a helicopter in the distance.”

This image was commissioned by Anime Insider magazine for their January 2006 issue. The idea was for the piece to look like high production cel animation from an anime series that could have reasonably existed.

My first draft of the image was pretty sterile. It lacked the much of the smoke, pyrotechnics, and whizzing bullets present in the final image. I remember submitting a finished draft of the image and getting back some notes suggesting I increase the amount of destruction and chaos. At the time I really resented covering up the background with effects and explosions, but I eventually came around to agree with the art director’s judgment. It definitely did amp up the excitement and make for a better picture overall.

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I used Photoshop for coloring the character and background art. The image took between 1-2 weeks.