Art Direction and Cover design 101
So, we were stumped and in a time crunch for a cover for G.I.JOE 32 (a situation that can and does occur throughout the comics publishing business... not to mention publishing in general), so I volunteered to do the cover. We already got the uber talented Tommy Castillo to do a really cool idea for issue 31 and Tim (I got more talent than underwear) Seeley has already been doing his regular bang up job but he needed a break.
I figured I'd take this opportunity to show the inner workings of my brain when making a cover.
First, we read the script. In this case, there are several on-going plot ideas going through the issue, so I'd have to determine the most dramatic event to depict on the cover. Without revealing too much about the issue, I managed to boil it down to two themes... one having to do with Destro and the other was a confrontation between the G.I.JOE members, Duke and Flint. Since Destro had been used several times on covers in the past, I decided to go with the two JOES.
Then comes sketch time. Trying to come up with one single composition that is both dramatic enough to sell a comic book and descriptive enough of what happens in the issue. The event itself must contain drama as well as the composition itself.
These are the two images I ended up with.
A
B
It was pretty obvious that B was the choice to go with, and it won unanimously in the office vote. It was just more dramatic to get rid of General Hawk and put the reader right there in the middle of the fight with Duke and Flint. Making somebody who's familiar with the book go, "Huh? Maybe I should pick this up, huh?"
Next step will be final pencils. More when that is done.
So, we were stumped and in a time crunch for a cover for G.I.JOE 32 (a situation that can and does occur throughout the comics publishing business... not to mention publishing in general), so I volunteered to do the cover. We already got the uber talented Tommy Castillo to do a really cool idea for issue 31 and Tim (I got more talent than underwear) Seeley has already been doing his regular bang up job but he needed a break.
I figured I'd take this opportunity to show the inner workings of my brain when making a cover.
First, we read the script. In this case, there are several on-going plot ideas going through the issue, so I'd have to determine the most dramatic event to depict on the cover. Without revealing too much about the issue, I managed to boil it down to two themes... one having to do with Destro and the other was a confrontation between the G.I.JOE members, Duke and Flint. Since Destro had been used several times on covers in the past, I decided to go with the two JOES.
Then comes sketch time. Trying to come up with one single composition that is both dramatic enough to sell a comic book and descriptive enough of what happens in the issue. The event itself must contain drama as well as the composition itself.
These are the two images I ended up with.
A
B
It was pretty obvious that B was the choice to go with, and it won unanimously in the office vote. It was just more dramatic to get rid of General Hawk and put the reader right there in the middle of the fight with Duke and Flint. Making somebody who's familiar with the book go, "Huh? Maybe I should pick this up, huh?"
Next step will be final pencils. More when that is done.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home