September 21st 2016

This weekend (September 24-25) I will be at the –

I’ll be selling most of the stuff ive been slinging for a while but ill also have a new book. finite episode 2! This will be it’s first show and i’d like to show you how i made the cover for her before i just throw it out there for you to see. Here we go!

It all starts with math. I laid out the base elements (two suns, some hands, the horizon fo the desert planet and a few aliens on mounts) here in Adobe Illustrator.

Next i work in some elements from the bottom. The planet was in 3D. I found some photos of hands and filled in the foreground ones with rough drawings.

Here i figured out my interlocking suns. It’s not all exciting.

Here i added some scans of tiny rough drawings that i’ve done on scraps of paper during the day job.

The logo as well as the sphere/ship make an appearance! It is a must to leave room for your books logo. Duh.

And on to the inks… or at least the digital inks. Up to this point weve been in photoshop. The inks here were layed out over the previous image in Manga Studio. I like this program.

We add some color to the lines…

Then some color between the lines. Sounds simple right? It’s not…

Some highlights and shadows here and there help define the depth of the subjects.

A few gradients, some noise and some black for the cold death of space and we are mostly done. Mostly.

Don’t forget to give yourself credit on your cover. It’s also a good idea to let them know what issue it is… or episode in our case. We are pretenous!

And i’m tired now. Goodnight internet!