I've had a great interest in Parkour for years and years now (although I'm still terrible at it). One of the things I love about it is that a central theme is breaking free from a world designed to regulate where you can go and how. You end up training your mind to see dozens of ways around the simplest obstacle, and quickly find the one that is both efficient, smooth, and interesting. This allows you to get from point A to point B extremely effectively, overcoming any obstacles along the way that would stop the average person and make them give up immediately (which isn't hard, since all you have to do is put a 5 foot tall wall in front of them and they walk all the way around instead of doing the easier thing like going over it).

This also means that point B often ends up in a place people don't normally think you CAN get to - say, on top of a building. I don't think this mental training and skill is limited in its use to Parkour.

So, I wanted to draw something for it. In my mind, I envisioned a complex city full of signs telling you where to go, dizzying heights, mazes of rails and walls and things that are intended to tell you you have to zigzag back and forth needlessly just to get down a staircase, and stuff like that - something that feels tight and restrictive, but to a traceur (a practitioner of Parkour), would be an ideal playground.

Unfortunately, I *still* haven't gotten around to learning perspective very well, and my abilities (and creativity) weren't yet up to the challenge of the background. So instead, I tossed a quick background in and while it doesn't have the message I originally intended, it's still a fun picture.

It was surprisingly hard to get the pose right for what you look like in the middle of a speed vault. I spent forever speed vaulting over the fence in front of my house, but normally, you pay attention to footing and hand position and such BEFORE you make the vault and then once you take off you just sort of let it happen. So... you really don't pay attention to that cool-looking middle part, and it was hard to both pay attention to jumping right, not landing on my face, and also keep track of where and at what angles all my arms, legs, and head was in the middle of flying through the air.

In the end, I gave up and found some random video of someone speed-vaulting and just paused it at a cool looking point. That was much easier.

Oh, for those curious, random plug, but there's lots of cool Parkour videos out there, which can quickly give you a feel for what it at least looks like. There's a pretty good one here: [link]

Of course, a lot of it isn't actually Parkour (for instance, flips aren't considered Parkour because they're slow, they break the flow of your movements, and there's almost never an instance in which doing a flip is faster, more efficient, or less energy-demanding than simply jumping). I think lots fall under free-running, but hey, it's fun to watch and it gives you the general idea.

[link] is another good one with David Belle in it, who's often credited for creating Parkour.

Err... and yeah. If you're interested, go look it up yourself. It's good stuff.