Day 40 "Basic Rights for Greate Apes"

Hey Guys,

Last Week I promised you something bigger.
A dear friend told me this was the best piece I did so far, so I figured, I post the progress this piece took over the last one and a half month.
Well, before that I will explain shortly, why i did this piece and why it is somewhat important to me.
 In my Design-School we've got all sorts of classes and since I chose Illustration as my Major I've got one class in which we, in this term at least, have to create a Piece Each month.
The Topic of this Piece is totally up to us, like many of the projects we work on, the only requirement for this is that we add typography to the piece which should be about 1/3 of the piece(the other 2/3 being the illustration itself).
 Two month ago, we went to the zoo again, like we do each year before summer vacation. Long story short, there was one emotion that totally got stuck with me.

As we saw the Gorillas my stomach tumbled, as one big old male looked at me with sad yet somewhat dull eyes. It was a brief moment, but that moment set free an avalanche of thought later on. Another gorilla started acting up, craving all the attention of the human audience. A few moments later a Gorilla-baby caught my eye. It was going over to the old male, who was paying him concerned attention, as he clumsily sat down beside, him leaning to his side. Imagine how I felt, having only looked down on these beautiful beings. I was ashamed for my race in a certain way and felt arrogant as human being how we treat them, putting ourselves on top of creation.
This is what I don't like about mankind including myself, i always have to compare myself to everyone...
This thing divides us from each other, sets nations apart and on another scale, hurts innocent ones. It's ok to be proud of where you come from, but its not OK to think higher of yourself, just because you belong to a diffrent ethnic group. We are one race and only because we go through hardships together, we evolved and made it this far. There is no place for arrogance and ignorance in this century, not if we want to move on and make this world a better place.
However, shortly after going to the Zoo, I read National Geographic Issue of July 2012(German edition).
I instantly remembered what happened at the zoo, just a few weeks past and suddenly felt an urge to do something about this.
I still had to do my work for illustration class, so I chose this topic and here I am writing this post.

Now without further do, here is the process how it got there and the final version.

first ideas

Have a great on guys,

regards,

Mitch