Visual thinking built-in
Sketches, Concepts and general Work-In-Progress will appear on my Tumblr.
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Another concept for a cover assignment from Grey Gecko Press. Author Wayne Basta wanted a Sci-Fi -character driven cover art, and here we go.
The title of the book is Aristeia - Book One - Revolutionary Right, available on Amazon.
From the very rough pencil sketch which is scanned, I added a layer of grey, to lower the contrast. The other sketch shows some lights and some shadows that were added. Photoshop has a nice function, once the bright foreground color and the darker background -colors are set, its easy to switch them with the shortcut:”X”.
In the further developed version (top) its obvious that I added some layers to add depth and mood. Also contrast adds to the composition, at this stage lighting still is subject to change, but I love to add a hard line of light on one side (left) and a subtle light that shapes the surface texture of the figure without looking too artifical - which is important to outdoor scenes.
See a colored version in the next post.
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Another project I did a while ago was a zombie cover for Jason Kristopher from Grey gecko Press. It was necessary to get into landscape painting and so I decided to start the work a bit differently than the usual pencil Vs. paper. I started to work in a 72dpi sketch directly in Photoshop with a standard textured rectangular brush, which is easy to see. I started to paint shapes of the scene to match the briefing. Later the zombie was added on a separate layer. For landscape, matte and concept art its the best to start out in a small size and change to 150 and later 300 dpi to add detail.
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This is the final version of the vampire- cover illustration. Not too much difference to the previous version - mainly worked out some details and slightly color corrections. Besides the nice illustration work, this commission turned into a bigger graphical assignment, where I´ve got to do the whole typography and layout for the book, besides bookmarks and promotion placards.
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Another update on the Vampire-saga Cover. Find the differences between this and the previous version;-) Just a bit more details on her expression, Leander, was too small, the hand rail was too square… and overall a bit darker than the previous sketch.
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New book cover art for a vampire novel. After a couple of concept roughs, this was one of the first approved roughs to go with, for a vampire concept for Seraphim: Carpe Noctem, a new book cover I worked on quite recently. As I post more progress pics, explanation follows. Have a look at Sandra´s facebook-page for more info.
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This is the final illustration, at least as I intended it to look. From the publisher came the directing, that the face of hers should be visible, this is whats on the cover now, here. But I like this version more.
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The next step in working out the coloring of the illustration in progress. This comes more close to the final work, but its interesting to see how the work direction has changed and derived from the initial sketch. Since there was no change required on the coloring I worked these out in detail, at this stage the leaves of the tree are still missing.
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Depicting colors and working them out. The coloration process is all done in several layers for the figure, foreground, background and details. In this screen-grab the mood I was going for is very much visible and is still an important part that went into the final illustration for “die letzte Zauberin“
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Another, more detailed sketch for “die Zauberin”. The direction for the cover setting has changed, I took the freedom to make the composition diagonal so that the eye has a very easy way to find into the image.
