I design a lot of book covers but I'm rarely asked to shift my brain into cartoon mode for the cover image. The most recent requests came
from author Richard Herr for his books, Invasion From Fred (a YA novel) and Dog & Pony, Vol. 1: Aloha
(a quirky, humorous novel in which all sort of crazy mishaps befall a
company that organizes business and product presentations for their
clients). The idea for the cover of Invasion From Fred came almost immediately after I read through portions of the manuscript.
Dog & Pony,
on the other hand, was quite a bit more challenging. The author's fist
idea was to use a cartoon image of a dog and a pony to symbolize the
concept from which the title is derived. After several revisions, this
was the result:
Sure,
it was cute but it didn't really work because it makes it seem as if
the story is actually about a dog and a pony which, as I mentioned
above, isn't the case at all. So the author suggested maybe a guy on
stage delivering a presentation and I came up with this:
That
was a better representation of the story but the author didn't like the
character for various reasons. Then he suggested maybe an illustration
of a scene from the story. He offered a few suggested scenes and this
one (below), featuring three of the main characters from the story,
seemed the most adaptable to a book cover in terms of composing the
scene so as to accommodate the title placement and author name.
At
last! Nailed it! LOL! Getting to this point involved a lot of time,
effort and creative head-scratching. But the author was willing to go
the extra mile regarding the cost and, in the end, he was thrilled with
the result. And that's what it's all about. A happy customer is a return
customer! Like, for example, the award-winning author, Hank Quense, who
was among the first to approach me with a request for cartoon
illustrations of some of the characters in his quirky sci-fi/fantasy
novels. In Hank's case, I was able to nail the cover images on the first
attempt. Here's one of my favorites that I did for Hank's book, the one, the only... Zaftan Entrepreneurs.
If
you want to connect with me about designing the cover for your next
book, visit my site where you can see my low prices and dozens of my
more traditional types of cover art. Or, hey, if you want a cartoon
illustration for your cover, that's cool, too! What ever you have in
mind, contact me and let's see if I'm the guy to make your book cover
stand out.
Click here:
