Completed Cover

I searched online and fount a free font called "Hazel Grace", I felt it's scrolling edges and almost etched appearance suited the feel of the story. I added a simple boarder that I felt complimented the typography and a few more autumn leaves to connect the inner image with the exterior.

Little Details, Big Difference

For this cover I wanted to create a snowy scene to one side and autumn scene to the other. combining both of these elements was tricky but using varying opacities throughout the different brush tools I feel I was able to achieve a nice blend between the two seasons.

This project has required me to create my own brushes to add the different winter aspects in my image. The two main brushes I created were "Frost" and "Ice", with these new tools I am able to add ice, frost, fog, mist and snow both on the ground and falling from the sky.  

 

To centralise the image and highlight the focus on "Geraldine" rather than the scenery I added a vignette, this also will make adding font and boarders easier later on in the project. 

Intense Shading

Despite probably being the more complicated design of the three, I chose layout 1 having fall transition into winter in the background with a full body image of "Geraldine".

The brief specifically stated that the author wanted a realistic mouse, similar to the style of
Beatrix Potter. I wanted to try create very realistic looking fur and chose to use an old technique I taught myself a long time ago, using a block base colour to fill the image and then one tone dark and one tone lighter to add shadow and highlights. Using a brush on low opacity meant I could add the different tones in gradually building up the different layers.

Page Layouts

After deciding that a Harvest mouse suits the style and setting that Kaufman has written in her book, I worked on different basic layout ideas for how the cover could look.

         Layout 1                                                   Layout 2                                                 Layout 3

Karin Kaufman

For this semester I had find or design commercial briefs to work from. With the help of Jen in college I was able to find some past contests on 99Designs. As the contests had finished I could not enter them but this particular brief appealed to me as it's within the line of work I hope to go into.

The Brief:


"I want an ebook cover that, if possible, can also be used with Amazon's CreateSpace. The title of the book is "The Adventures of Geraldine Woolkins," and the author is "Karin Kaufman."I'd prefer not to use a photo, at least as the main element. Rather, I'd like an illustration of the book's main character, a young female mouse. I'd like the mouse to look detailed in a *realistic* Beatrix Potter way, and I'd like her to be in a dark brown coat (not the same tone of brown as her fur). I'd also prefer not to have a dark/ominous cover. Also, the stories in the book are set from mid October to late December -autumn leaves to winter snow.It's important to me that the cover NOT look like a typical children's "cartoony" cover. This book is really for adults to read to children, and even to read themselves, so it can't have that pre-school look to it. Other than that, feel free to be creative with everything else! Below I'm attaching three covers that strike me as interesting for the way they look -- more for their flavour than anything specific in them (probably don’t want a dark, nighttime cover as in the last two illustrations)." 

Before starting the actual layout ideas I decided I wanted to try my hand at drawing a variety of mice species to help me decide which one best fit the story settings and themes. 

Messing Around

Quick doodle in Photoshop, testing out different shading techniques, lighting effects and some different brushes.

New Year

Happy new years! Random doodle. A gift from me to you (: