Happy Birthday Johnny (Patreon)

For his Birthday, my partner Johnny asked for a book cover.

He'd bought a used copy of Marvel Comics the Untold Story, an old library copy that didn't have a dust jacket. So he asked if I'd design and make a new dust jacket for it. I was honored that he had asked me to give him art for his birthday, and thankful that it was a specific enough request that I didn't get overwhelmed by the possibilities.

He even gave me an inspiration board.

It was mostly (all?) art from Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, his two favorite comic book artists. I tried to take just a few elements that felt emblematic of the styles and also appealed to me: the geometric shapes, the collage, aspects and the paired down pallets. 

Johnny also wanted a specific image of Spiderman to be included.

I was also strongly inspired by this abstract piece by Kirby. 

There's something very 30's industrial but also fantastically sci-fi about it. I decided the cover should have a city-like section and a space area. Since I was already planning on having spiderman in the industrial area, I decided to balance him out with a Dr. Strange image in the space section.

I started by looking for collage elements, specifically old photos of huge industrial machines, a groovy spiral, and an old photo of the stars. Then I added a few geometric shapes, including spaces for the title and a name plate.

This was about all the elements I wanted to be include but I needed a background of some sort and a single color didn't seem right at all. So I took that Kirby abstract, ran it through image trace, and switched out the original colors with the pallet I'd built for this piece.

It was a little too distracting so I put a halftone texture over the whole thing to tone it down and make it a bit more uniform.

Then I used halftone shading to bring out the foreground elements and give them some depth.

I'm really happy with how it came out and so is Johnny. It's very different from what I normally do, but I had a blast doing it and I think I can use it as a portfolio piece.