📚 Book Cover Process Breakdown 📚 (Patreon)

Hello Patrons! 🫶

Yesterday, I shared a cover that I had illustrated on social media! I want to share the process breakdown of “The Unicorn Legacy: Tangled Magic.” 📚

Last year, I was recently approached by a designer from Bloomsbury to illustrate the cover for Kamilla Benko’s latest book. Once I read through the synopsis, I was immediately hooked and decided to sketch out the characters and settings. Usually, the art director and designer would provide a summary or a book manuscript. They would also share the descriptions of the characters, locations, and overall mood.

With middle-grade books, especially in the US market, the protagonists are often shown in the front and center of the cover. ✨

Here are the three sketches I created for the cover:

A) Features the Academy crescent, unicorn horn, and side characters along with Olivia (the main character)

B) Olivia is holding one of the weapons featured in the book, and we see a glimpse of the Unicorn Academy in the background

C) An arched shape silhouette featuring the characters behind the Unicorn Academy setting

The team decided to go with sketch B since they really liked the Unicorn silhouette. This was also my favourite, so I was happy to continue working on this sketch.

For the revised sketch, they have decided to feature Olivia and add a border around the book to add symbolism. I sent a couple of colour passes featuring different times of the day. After going through those passes, we decided to go with this one. The sunny skies against the dark violet background will help make the silhouette stand out.

Once we’ve already got the colour palette set, it’s time to start rendering and adding more details. During this stage, I usually ask for more references of the location, characters, clothing, etc to accurately capture the character and story’s description.

I usually don't provide character sketches for the character when working on the cover. However, sometimes when I’m unsure of how I want to depict the pose and her look, I send them rough sketches to see which one they’d prefer in the final cover

Since this is already the last stage of the process and knowing there won’t be too many major changes, I decide to add the details and final touches to the cover.

Any small changes can still happen once you send the final, but usually, they are quite minor and won’t need more than a day to complete.

Here's the finished cover! ✨

I'm very happy to have worked on this! I had a blast designing Olivia and creating a silhouette to illustrate the story! 💕

Hope you like seeing this process! The book comes out on February 2024 if you are interested! 🥰

Love always,

Maxine