Cover Work Process #3

Previously, on the Book 1 cover process, we were this far:

The inks were almost done, but there were a few tweaks still required — mainly this bit from where the Guardian’s tail got extended:

Then there was a bit of shading I wanted added to the inks on the legs of the Ravager. All of it culminated in the final inks here:

Now the colors got started. We did some fiddling with them (and when I say ‘we’, I mean my friend colored things and I went ‘eeeeh I dunno about thaaaat’ or ‘yaaaaay I love it!’) and started getting things together.

The Ravager’s cranky bird-face.

A color test on the Guardian’s flank. I said I thought it should be more blue, since blue is one of the main character’s colors.

She put down the base colors as per my specifications, and we talked about adding scales to the Guardian’s face and what should be going on with its mouth area.

Close-up of the first scale placement. I wasn’t sure about it.

More scales, which I liked (though I didn’t so much like the ones on the lip area), plus an eye design that I vetoed in favor of the inkdrop eye from earlier.

More colors, including the scales I asked for on the brow, but with a muzzle area I disliked — a bit too dark and rubbery for my preference. So she started adjusting the muzzle area.

She had left a dark stripe that looked like a mustache from a distance, which I had to point out (with a rather fine line compared to my usual huge orange editing brush). Yes, I’m picky.

Moving on from that, she tried to work on the fin but ended up with something neither of us really liked.

It’s an interesting mottling pattern but it looks a bit sickly, maybe… Either way, we weren’t happy with it, so she got rid of it and switched to working on the Ravager for a bit.

So far the Guardian looks like this:

We decided that the Ravager should be mostly yellow-orange in the wings, red in the feet and with a blue eye, since that is how the Imperial crest describes it. So here’s the new eye up close: