05 Cover Art
The Phantom Pleasure First Episode Cover Process
Hello! I’m currently illustrating a high-detail establishing shot of GEO-CITY ONE (The area where the story takes place). Unfortunately I can’t share that piece just yet, but I can share some art of Echo for the cover.
I’ve wanted this specific pose for the cover for quite a while… And I’ve rendered it many times over the last year of development. Here’s the first time I ever drew it, waaaaaaay before I even settled on the comic Synth Suit design:
Not very impressive, huh? The anatomy is also really bad! Anyway, I would eventually finalize what Echo should look like in my comic, and began work on another drawing of the same pose. Here’s the preliminary sketch:
I used several different digital painting techniques, and a lot of trial and error. It ended up looking like this:
It’ pretty cool, over all! But looking at it now, with some time and experience, something is really missing. I like her facial expression, but the bangs look weird and the detail on the suit is just way off. There’s a vector-like quality to it, which bothers me tremendously. Obviously, this one has not aged too well, even if it is less than a year old. So, last week I began work on a new version…
I really like the way this looks, especially what I was doing with the strands of Synth Suit. But, I started to feel like the angle was too dull for a cover piece… It’s just too straight on eye-level. So, predictably, I quit and started over!
Here is the base line art. I switched the ink from black to a deep purple to match the palette I had in mind. I changed the angle, making the line of sight lower and titled upwards. I don’t know why, I just feel like this has more energy. I didn’t finish drawing the head, because I knew from the start I was going to paint the hair separately.
I wanted the overall color to be exaggerated this time. So, I used heavy shading, blending several pink and magenta tones until it felt right. I went about it organically, without using multiple layers (except for the eyes). On to the Synth Suit…
There isn’t much process to show here, as I again kept the process organic, shading and highlighting on a single layer. Then I added the chest diode lights, and some big wet-look shine over the dark ink to make certain spots pop:
I wish I had thought to take some time lapse shots of the hair… I did it pretty quickly, stream of consciousness. I started with a base layer, drawing the general shape of her hair using a dark reddish blonde color. Then I went layer by layer, drawing each strand of hair with quick strokes, each layer getting lighter and lighter.
And then I added some harsh red light to her left side, as the final cover will have Halo lurking behind her in neon. Here is the finished illustration of Echo:
I may mess with the colors some more and add age and texture to it for the actual cover. I hope you all like it!
More soon.
