Dan Woodger — freelance illustrator, animation director, and returning Daring Forever guest — joins Radim to unpack Run London Draw London, the project he built alongside training for this year's London Marathon. ~
Starting from a blank canvas in January, Dan invited people to donate £5 to add a hand-drawn character to a sprawling crowd-scene illustration of the marathon route, turning strangers, club runners, and eventually Paula Radcliffe, pro athletes, and podcast hosts into part of the artwork.
The conversation ranges across the collision of running and illustration, the frustration of NDA'd client work going unseen, the highs and lows of a data-obsessed relationship with Strava, and the sheer force of just asking for what you want. It closes on marathon day itself — cramp, crowd energy, and a mid-race bottle of water from Mo Farah — and on what comes next for the project.
Takeaways
The project raised over £5,000 for Oxfam, well past the initial £2,000 target, entirely self-funded and self-run
Dan built the crowd scene in public on Instagram, showing the process rather than only the finished piece, as a deliberate response to AI in the industry
Two hundred characters were needed to fill the scene — a number he set himself before a single donation came in
Getting Paula Radcliffe, Mo Farah, pro athlete Julia Paternain, and the Ellis James and John Robins podcast involved all came from cold, slightly odd, direct asks
Frustration with NDA'd client work — and the resulting quiet in his inbox — was part of what pushed him to make something fully his own
Running and illustration turned out to share the same trap: comparing your own work-in-progress to everyone else's highlight reel
On race day, cramp hit from 30K onward, but the crowd — and strangers recognising their own drawn characters — carried him through
He's already thinking about a second edition, ideally with a brand or sponsor covering the printing and shipping costs he covered out of pocket this time
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