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.

Book cover workshop - figuring things out

I'd previously done some research on my story and the links that it had with the program 'The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack.
I guess on the way I became a little attached to the secondary character Captain K'nuckles, I adored his design and I feel like he has influenced my characters for this workshop. I loved how this program illustrated the nose, large bulbous shapes have never looked better!
Above I have included some of my character designs for Stormalong and the arrows depict the evolution of him, the length of the nose and the way the characters eyes sit have definitely been influenced by watching this program.

Also I like how beards are animated in this program, the middle image shows some rough sea dogs and their beards have sentient qualities, one's is even holding a sword!

The two digital images of captain Stormalong (enclosed in sketchbook folder) were greatly inspired by Logan Faerber and he is one of my new favorites
This guy has found the perfect balance between digital and traditional, the textures and lines are hand rendered and then the colouring is done digitally. The image on the far bottom right was one of his narratives and it helped give me an idea for the Stormalong comic (top right/middle)

I am happy with the two digital outcomes that I made but I'd like to tone it down a bit for the book cover. During some of my early thumb nails I drew out some simpler ideas and I think that is the way I should go.

Stormalong - cartoon connections?

My chosen story is about a giant sea captain who goes by the name of Alfred Stormalong. He appears in various sea shanties and folk tales and is one of the greats and shares the throne with other folk giants such as Paul Bunyan. I have already written a story synopsis and began character generation in my sketchbooks so I won't post it all again on here but I wanted to post some thematic research on here because I dislike sticking images in a book. There is an awesome cartoon that runs on cartoon network called the Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack which has some beautiful characters and scenery. That stuff aside I have recently noticed that the harbor in the program is named Stormalong, coincidence? Maybe but the harbor is large, so large in fact that it is it's own island, Stormalong's ship was so large that he could never dock it meaning he was constantly at sea. The Fan art above also shows this giant creature dwelling below the harbor which matches Stormalong's description pretty well, both Stormalong and his ship the Courser were incredibly huge so the harbor could be parodying either.

If we look at the image above you can see that the harbor has a mini village on it, there is also a giant galleon which could even be the Courser. 

Above is a screen cap from the cartoon, there appears to be a large octopus character which lies deep under the harbor, this character is also seen in the first image at the bottom of the sea. Stormalong had a famous feud with a giant octopus like creature which further supports my theory that this entire island and show is loosely based around the old Cap'n Stormalong, which I think is pretty cool!