Project Four: Book Covers
Book Cover Series
The Quintessential Quests
The Tale of Despereaux, Ella Enchanted, Stardust
Introduction: Creating my own Series
All the following books were fantasy stories that I remember from my childhood. The stories also go in ascending order of target age group. I read the three in order from elementary school, middle school, and high school. Each fantasy involves an underdog as the main character that goes on a noble quest. Each main character is quite different. One being a mouse, another a teenaged girl, and another an adult man. Each draws inspiration from the fantasy genre as a whole, and mixes in new and modern elements. All books are also very similar in length. All also have movie adaptations.
Research:
The Tale of Despereaux
By Kate DiCamillo in 2003, 276 pages
Ella Enchanted
By Gail Carson Levine in 1997, 240 pages
Stardust
By Neil Gaiman in 1999, 256 pages
Ideation: Sketches
I wanted to bring key elements of the book to capture the fantasy-like ambition of the main characters. I wanted to also stress the fact that each character was seen by others as somewhat weak. In Despereaux’s case, characters ruled him out because of his tiny size. However, Despereaux makes up for his size with his bravery. Ella, similarly, is cursed with obedience. However, she makes up for her extreme obedience with her strong will. Lastly, Tristan is very immature in the beginning of the book. However, along the way, his heart and passion ends up being his biggest strength.
In my sketches, I attempted to capture this essence with simple silhouettes with relevant graphics. For Despereaux, I highlighted his size with him encapsulated in a shield. However, I portrayed him confidently and with a sword. For Ella, I wanted to depict her strong will with her expression. However, I bottled her up to symbolize obedience beyond her control. For Tristan, I drew him within both a star and a heart.
All these sketches were not exactly where I wanted the symbols to be. My digital iterations eventually clarified my vision.
Ideation: Colors
For my colors, I wanted to convey the fantasy world all the books depicted. The first colorscheme that came to mind was light hearted pastel colors. Specifically, pink, green, and purple. Green automatically mapped itself to Ella Enchanted because of her signature dress mentioned in the book. However, the pink and purple choices came from my own personal associations with The Tale of Despereaux and Stardust. The Tale of Despereaux is a children’s book about a loveable and brave mouse who has a deep love for the princess. This storyline evoked a pale pink to represent the love but also the innocence of the characters. Stardust made me feel a rich, dark purple because it is more mature and complex. The purple connected the book’s themes of love, lust, and loyalty. However, purple also conveys the mysterious and fantastical nature of the plotline in Stardust.
Process: Digital Iterations
My first digital iterations were rife with issues. Despite the issues, I am proud of the progress of the illustrations. In terms of symbolism, I believe that my updated silhouettes, specifically for Ella Enchanted and Stardust, were a lot clearer. For my Ella Enchanted cover, I exemplified her strong will through her stance instead of her expression. This change conveyed a lot more meaning than my previous sketch. Additionally, I made a large change with Tristan on the cover of Stardust. In order to convey his extreme sentimentality, I depicted a silhouette of a young man handing off a small flower.
The issues with these first include uncomfortable tension, unclear hierarchy, and general inconsistency. The uncomfortable tension mainly lies in the placement of the silhouettes. While my feedback positively noted the placement of Ella Enchanted’s silhouette, Despereaux and Tristan both were uncomfortable close to many sharp points in the graphic. Specifically, the sword tip of Despereaux and the whole body of Tristan were too close to the surrounding graphic to invoke a sense of comfort and balance in my viewers. Additionally, because all graphics were hand drawn, many noted that my lines were too sharp and would benefit from being rounded out. The unclear hierarchy was an easy fix. I did not change font size between title and author. Lastly, the inconsistent included my alignment, the size of the illustrations, and the placement of the title and author.
Additionally, I had some pivotal recommendations that I took to heart. I was told to consider printing on different paper to further the “adventure” feel of my quest series. I was also recommended to try inverting the colors because white was quite harsh and distracting from my illustrations. Overall, I had a lot of important feedback and changes to make moving forward.
Process: Digital Iterations Continued
Above are my illustrations after initially integrating the feedback I received from the first mini critique. I truly took a lot of time rounding out edges and working on removing tension from my drawings. Additionally, I paid more attention to the illustrations themselves and improved upon my existing ones. For example, I completely redid Tristan’s flower on the cover of Stardust. The flower, compared to the first iteration, is larger, clearer, and smoother. Additionally, I fixed the hierarchy problem and increased the size of the title and placed the author right below it. I changed font from san-serif to serif to further the fantasy-like feel.
With my new digital iterations, I attempted to invert the colors. I decided to place a white border around these to control the strong use of color. Overall, I realized the effect of the invert colors was a lot stronger and more elegant than their predominantly white counterparts. I decided to continue with this idea as I moved forward to work on the spine and back covers.
Final Designs
The biggest changes for my final iterations were the addition of the full back covers and spine. I decided to include my favorite quotes, that didn’t spoil plot points, on the back. Additionally, I named the series “Quintessential Quests” and included both a banner and a scroll to each to tie all the stories together. An important change in illustration occured in my Stardust cover. I changed the star that Tristan was encapsulated inside into a shooting star. I decided to change this because I disliked the amount of whitespace around his silhouette. Although this new shape risks more tension within the shapes, I believe it ultimately gave my final cover a more balanced feel.
Conclusion
Overall, I am very proud of my progress in this project. This project was very challenging for me because it heavily valued the importance of detail. Moving forward, I need to become more aware of how details affect my overall deliverable. These details range from setting up my Adoble Illustrator measurements correctly to realizing that a new color paper has the potential to wash out the clarity of my text. I put in a lot of work for this project but I also had trouble effectively meeting deadlines for mid-critiques. Although I received valuable feedback regardless, I believe if I was more timely in my deliverables I could have utilized my time more wisely. In conclusion, I am excited to move forward with the things I’ve learned for the next project.
