Google Doodle picks LR artist

Tribute to B.B. King goes live on bluesman’s birthday

A Little Rock artist was tipped off about a collaboration with Google Doodle in a fitting way a little over three months ago.

Steve Spencer’s website began to see a lot of traffic from the Bay Area, a fact he knew thanks to Google Analytics.

He didn’t understand at first why views were coming from that area, but when he got an email June 18 asking him if he wanted to work on a doodle, it all made sense.

Spencer helped create a Google Doodle that went live Monday celebrating the 94th birthday of blues musician B.B. King, who died May 14, 2015.

“I’ve been working what feels like nonstop on it until a week ago today,” Spencer said. “I was really familiar with Google Doodle, and I felt honored to be asked.”

Spencer’s doodle shows a drawing of King with his head forming the second “o” in the search engine’s name. When users click the doodle, they’re brought to a two-minute video illustrated by Spencer and animated by Nayeli Lavanderos that summarizes King’s life and career.

Spencer said he once saw King open for a more wellknown act in the 1980s and felt won over by his generosity in performance — especially when the headliners stopped the performance short and King took over, helping the show go on.

“Having had that experience made me give that little extra every time,” Spencer said.

King was born in 1925 to a family of cotton sharecroppers near Indianola, Miss., and the video walks through his early life, including when began playing music in church as a child.

King moved to Memphis in the 1940s, and Spencer said he paid special attention to drawing this transition.

He kept the colors of the doodle muted until the part of the video where King moves to the city. Then Spencer used vibrant colors to illustrate how King’s life changed.

The video continues to show King’s rise to fame and ends on his enduring legacy with the B.B. King Museum.

Spencer said he hopes the doodle inspires people unfamiliar with King to listen to King’s music, and he hopes personally, it brings him more work in animation.

Spencer said he hasn’t fully processed that the video is done as sketches and planning boards remain all around him.

“I’m blown away by it,” he said. “I still can’t completely absorb it.”