FaLLEN Vol. 1 Cover Design - Arma

This is for every paying Patron! Thanks for your support! And big shout out to our newest patron James!! The entire Chapter 5 post will be going up Saturday, by the way, and the second design will probably be up by Monday or Tuesday. Keeping busy!

What a week! I think I finally found a printer to handle most of my print needs! They showed me some samples and I was pretty impressed, and they are local to boot! I could write a lengthy entry on the kind of crazy problems I've been dealing with but I finally got some good news today and can move forward with these products.

I've used a dozen printers in Japan and never once did my use of gradations cause any problems. Apparently it is a BIG problem for American printers. Go figure!

For the cover I am doing two complete illustrations. I'm almost done with the second one, and when it's done I'll send out surveys for people to vote on their favorite design.

This is the first of two designs! This one features Arma, and if this is the design people vote on, I will likely do that thing some manga artists do where each volume of their manga just has one character on the front (Sailor Moon reprints, Fruits Basket, Slam Dunk reprints, etc). The other design features other characters and is similar to the covers I did for the black and white manga.

I'm going to be honest, I thought I would prefer the group image but I am kind of digging this cover more. I found an ollldddd sketch of Arma and decided to give it new life, and I really liked how it turned out!

Process Images

This was the original image I found in a folder titled "old art." Not sure how old it is but I could not find any kind of finished version, just this rough lineart.

Redid the lineart completely and did spot blacking. Included more of the sword, etc.

Silhouettes! I actually have the sword and Arma as separate entities so I can make edits more easily.

Flat colors!

Shading! I actually redrew her shoulder and used shadows to define her muscles a bit more. Added leaves and put down a gradation of green for the background.

Gradients and highlights!

Added line effects, blush, patterns and textures, and actually went in and added a second shadow layer, which I sometimes do for cover illustrations but not usually for comic pages.

This is just the image with the logo so people can vote. This shows where the logo would likely sit for the book cover, if people decide they want this for the cover. The poster for this and postcard for this will look like the main image at the top. There will also be a bookmark featuring this image.