Book cover workshop - Figuring my character out and final plans.

This was the first initial run for my book cover design, I kept a similar text from the original digital images I made but chose to include just the head of O'l Stormalong. This was a happy accident, I was mapping out where elements would lay on the page and drew his head large just to see how it would sit, I ended up liking it and digitally inked it up straight away. The chains simulate those of the anchor that Stormalong swam to the bottom of the ocean to retrieve whilst having to fight a giant octopus. I wanted the chains to be subtle so I multiplied them and dimmed the colours, I also wanted Stormalong to be entangled within the chains so some elements of his face are multiplied to gain this effect.

After messing around with thumbnails for a while I thought it best to keep the tentacles minimal, here they are in blue, not yet the final colour scheme but the composition of the tentacles looks pretty good. I could make the tentacles weave in and out of the chains to make them more involved in the piece, that way they don't look like they have just been slapped on.

Above are some of my favorite illustrations from Andrew Kolb and Drake Broadahl. their images can get pretty busy but they maintain order with some lush colour palettes and subtle textures. The elements in their illustration are simple yet effective and that is what I want to go for with this book cover design. It would be nice to add some subtle textures to the tentacles or maybe the Stormalong character, maybe some flecks on his beard.

Here is my final image - well so far anyway.
Ive added anchors onto the spine and a matching title, I have proofed the colours and upon doing so the greens become slightly less vibrant and it also immerses the elements nicely within the piece. I threw the crop marks on there so I could see where to fold it when I print it out. Now I want to print it and get it on the book to see how it looks in a 3D context, There is a version included in my sketchbook folder which has a texture along the top but after consideration I took it out because it didn't work with the piece. I still have a week left so I might play around with adding textures and things but i'm feeling pretty happy with this one at the moment. It's nice to see how this character has evolved since the start of the project, he looks a lot more stylized now and i'm pretty happy about that. At first I was a little concerned with the green tentacles but I remembered that I am not using a realistic colour palate which totally justifies them being green in this case and they also stand out really nicely against my red character which is what I was aiming for.