Overall

I enjoyed creating these book designs. At the start I was hoping too much of creating 10 book covers in the space of time that I had, but from minimizing it down to 5 then to 3 to work on I produced something that is portfolio worthy. I learned new techniques for presenting book covers from using a mock up and I know what I want to do in future, which is advertising and illustration.

Originally I wanted to create minimalism for the books. That idea changed to symbolism after designing the "Watership Down" cover as I enjoyed making the black rabbit in the Rabbits pupil. It can give some sort of the story away without telling and would make readers want to read it. The black rabbit is basically the rabbit death god in their tribe. As most rabbits are fearful of trespassers, new environments and survival, the black rabbit is mention numerous times in the film and book. This gave me the idea of having the black rabbit as the pupil in the eye, to show that the rabbits are staring at death everytime, everyday.

This also helped when designing "The Last Unicorn" as I wanted something thats not just a unicorn. By creating a Unicorn skull from a real horse skull and adding the horn it shows loneliness, extinction, death and isolation. In the book no one has seen the unicorns for centuries including the main character, who is a unicorn. When people meet her they are shocked, amazed and sad knowing that she might be the last one. Skulls in museums or in history are shown for extinction of an animal and this ties in well with the theme

For the final book, "The Doomspell" it was a hard book to interpret as symbolism without revelaing the character. I have read the book loads of times and decided to use the eye as symbolism again. There are loads of eye in the book (Witches eye, the eye tower, children s eyes, buttons that are eyes) but I wanted something different. What striked me the most is that when a child in the bok has magic, their iris's change colour for using that spell, e.g. blue for flying, brown for killing curse, yellow for glow, etc. Instead of using just one colour I used different colours and gradients for the eye. The main character, Rachel, can have loads of spells and her eyes at the end have multicolored. This shows strength, power and mystery with just having one eye in the black background with nothing else to give away.

I want to keep on researching book designs in the summer and different mock ups for different medias such as leaflets, posters and even postcards. I enjoyed this class and finally have something for my final portfolio, which I am very happy for.

Final Book Covers - Presentable

Here are my final book covers which look more presentable. I used the hardcover book templates from Graphic Burger, a site that has loads of templates for presenting designs.

I am very happy with my designs and will be used in my portfolio.

The Last Unicorn

The Doomspell

Watership Down

Blurbs

I thought to put this now incase i get in trouble in future. For the blurb text I got the plot and reviews from amazon. I will list them here for referencing.

The Last Unicorn - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Last-Unicorn-S-Beagle-Peter/dp/1631401270/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1460641877&sr=1-1&keywords=the+last+unicorn

The Doomspell - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Doomspell-Trilogy-Book/dp/1858818508/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1460644332&sr=1-1&keywords=the+doomspell  (I have re-worded the blurb to make it less)

Watership Down - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Watership-Down-Puffin-David-Parkins/dp/0141354968/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1460644392&sr=1-1&keywords=watership+down

Reason for this is to make the designs more realistic, and I thought adding a blurb and few reviews would help.

Last Unicorn Final!

I have finished my Last Unicorn book design. I just need to upload it as a mock up for presentation.

I have went with the radical black and purple gradient which goes well with my geometric unicorn skull and white text. I left out the book texture as the mock up does this for me and it would be too textured.

mock up THE LAST UNICORN

The purple colour sets a tone for this kind of book as it has more of drama and tragedy. The skull brightens it up a little bit, even if its a skull. I may go over the title and look for more fonts that look a bit more gothic in a way.

The Last Unicorn - skulls

I am currently designing the last unicorn book cover. I still want the skull idea in the middle of the book but have hit a problem as I cannot do realistic painting on Photoshop very well. I drew out the skull, scanned then redrew again on Photoshop. The results was not very good.

Looks good for art but not for book cover

As this was a problem I looked for a solution. I love geometric designs of portraits (You can find it on my behance) giving them unusual colour. I haven't done a skull before so I gave it a shot.

Geometric skull

I like the geometric design with the different shades in large shadow areas. I will need to work on it such as adding cracks and lining up each shape. I will then place on the front cover of the book. May change the background colour of the book as I think red looks too rich against the skull.

UPDATED WATERSHIP DOWN

I decided to focus on 3 book covers that I have already roughly created. I couldn't do 10 books with my time frame and brought it down to 5 books and then 3 books that I can finalise. I have already finished one book, and will need to upload it onto a mock up book cover to make it look look more presentable.

For this book I got the real dimensions of a book design from this site http://www.datemplate.com/post_create-a-book-template_79967/ and I will be using it again for the rest of the designs.

For Watership Down I went back to the fur. As I changed my project from minimlaism to symbolism I reworked the fur. I got the fur texture from textures.com which is a royalty free site. I changed the colour slightly and darken it. I then added the eye and added shadows and a small light to make it more realistic and 3D.

For the back cover I just added text and had to add a box as the type did not stand out and blended within the fur.

My next step is adding the design onto a mock up book cover. Afterwards I will work on The Doomspell book.

Last Unicorn

I know that this is past my original schedule but I finally have an idea for the book. I didn't just want to show a Unicorn, or fields or the red bull. Since i changed my project from Minimalism to Symbolism, due to Watership Down, I wanted to create something that represents loneliness, isolation and extinction of a creature.

So I decided to create a Unicorn skull, withered, dirty colours and a dark red background. I looked at horse skulls on the internet and rhino skulls for the horns. I sketched out the skull and the placement of the horn. I already have a font to use for the title and author and the placement. My next step is to redraw this on photoshop and edit in a way that it looks old and deteriorated, similar to skulls you see in museums.

Sketch of Unicorn skull

Skulls are a great way to represent sadness, loneliness and extinction. Taking the dark road rather than the happy one of just showing the Unicorn doesn't go well with the style of the book. The next step is to outline the skull, colour it, place it on the cover and add shadows and depth. This should be done by the end of this week.

Rough layout of front cover.
 Not sure to add the spine or not.
Will design two covers with spine and no spine