Final Product Work In Progress

Creating a Pencil Drawing & Inking

Before starting anything I needed to illustrate my front cover.
To start with I drew out the basic design on an A3 piece of paper. After spending a few hours perfecting this design I took a light box and then got another piece of paper before using use to trace of the design. This also took a few hours to perfect.

This is the process of of inking which I did.
Once this had been completed I scanned the inked sheet into my laptop before moving it into a program called Paint Tools Sai and starting to colour it. Before anything I removed the white background of the sketch and then thresholded the lines so that instead of having grey lines I had black ones.

Colouring and Shading the Wolf (Front Cover)

Once the thresholding had been completed I started on making new layers and groups and then proceeding to colour the actual wolf. Due to my drawing style the original outline I'd inked was used as a guide line, so therefore the opacity of the layer it was on was lowered to about 20% before starting to add 'Fur' to the neck and face of the wolf. This was done by using a 'sketch' brush already installed on Paint Tools Sai and quickly making a base layer.

Under the base layer of fur would be an base colour layer which would be used to keep the hues I was going to use for the fur in the same range, so that i would only be using browns, blacks and whites.

Continuing to add fur shading, I moved onto the fur pattern around the wolves eyes. Using a light shade of brown around the eyes and also adjusting the pen size to be smaller i added the realistic fur length around the face and, also adding the marks around the nose area showing that the wolf would be snarling.

This shows the start of the nose fur and also the finished nose I drew. To complete this I made a grey layer in the shape of a canine nose ad started to add small details to make it look more realistic. I also did this to add texture to the nose, as to match what a real canines nose looks like up close.

This is what the image currently looked like with the basic fur shading an the nose completed, I also added whisker spots where a wolf normally has them.

Now that the nose and fur was almost completed I could start on the mouth details. For this I started with the black lip ridge you normally get inside a canines mouth, this would allow me to show that the has it's mouth open and is snarling, due to the fact you wouldn't be able to see the lip without it being snarling as such.

Finishing the lip I moved onto the actual teeth of the canine, the gums and the tongue. Because of the book, and wanting to make it seem a lot more scary than it was originally told I specifically focused on the elongation of the wolves tongue, and also making it pointed, so that it resembled something more demonic instead of an ordinary wolf.

This is what it looked like once the mouth had been completed, and also shaded to look more realistic.

After everything else had been completed this was the finished wolf head before I added the ripped red riding hoods coat through the wolves mouth. I specific didn't add eyes to give the drawing a more sinister look, and make it less like a realistic wolf.

 After completing the wolf I started to draw the ripped red cloth in between it's teeth, doing so to give the idea that the wolf has maybe attacked Little Red Riding Hood, maybe eaten her, or even something more strange happened. This pinpoints the use of relationships of the piece, the relationship between predator and prey, although what you think is the prey may be the predator.

After doing the outline I coloured in the pieces of cloth with added some shading so they didn't seem flat against the wolves nose. This would be the final wolf to go on my front cover.


Colouring and Shading the Wolf (Back Cover)

 Following the same process of colouring and shading as I had done before I started to create the back cover page, which is meant to show the back of the wolves head, instead of the front. Of course, this was a lot easier due to the fact i didn't need to add as much detail, and I could use my already  made template from before.

This is the final piece which will be used as the back cover of the book I am creating a cover for.

Creating the background


 After i'd completely finished this process of colouring i started to create the background, I did this by copying my third experiment of melting crayons onto a canvas.

Instead of doing a multiple coloured canvas design like in my experiment, I decided to use red, orange and yellow hues to give a more menacing looking feel to the painting. I did this by holding the crayons over an A4 canvas and using a hair dryer to melt them into a splattered, demonic sky looking scene.

This was the final background piece.

Once I'd completed this I scanned this into my laptop and put it as a background layer on my drawing, this being done in Photoshop. I purposely made it so the background would be shown through the yes of the wolf i'd drawn. This was purposely made so that the background was made darker but filters in Photoshop.

1st Cover Editing and Arranging in Photoshop

After all the drawing had been done I moved my work into photoshop, and set out the guidelines needed so that I could start adding type.

I started by adding the background I'd made into Photoshop and also adding the front cover wolf and back cover wolf to the file on Photoshop.

After this I started to add the text that I needed on the front cover. I adjusted the size of the type multiple times so that I could get an appropriate size, not wanting to make it an over statement and not wanting to make it so you can't read the title of the book from afar.

Once this was complete, I decided to add more text, this would be the price of the book when it was published and sold, the text upon the spine of the book and also the shelving category. so that there wasn't a massive variation in typeface, I decided to stay with only two choices of typeface.

I also then added the writers photograph, an small biography section on the flaps of the books according with the writer, a blurb, enhancement line, and also a bar-code at the bottom left-hand corner. Re-arranging these multiple time, I made it so that they were specifically placed to look profession and not amateurish.

2nd Cover Editing and Arranging in Photoshop

For my second final piece I took the already drawn wolf and instead of having it over the front cover only I put it over the front cover and also the back cover. This evidently made the detail on the cover a lot more noticeable. Due to the fact that it'd be over the spine of the book, i selected this specific bit and cropped the wolf out of it. This would be so that if you were to look at it on a book shelf you'd actually be able to read it. 

After doing this I started to re-add the text I'd made on the previous version to this, but instead of having it in the same way, I decided to change it around. Enlarging the title and changing the position so that it wouldn't disrupt the canines head. Then adding the text on the spine, and also changing it so that back blurb text would also not disrupt the canines, it evidently made the book cover more spacey and profession 

I then added the flap text and images, along with the book price. This would end up being my second final cover.