AnimeCon Harem Cover Series Progress (Patreon)

Realized I hadn't been keeping everyone updated on these; I work regularly with four artists on about ten different orders a month, but most of that progress is towards the visual novel adaptation.

We're commissioning a set of novel cover illustrations from Deryl Arrazaq for ebook and print publishing. He completes for us at a rate of about a month and a half to two months per order, and works are a little hit or miss... but with him pricing them at a third of the cost of similar artists, we can basically afford to keep swinging until we get all the home runs we need.

Reference material we sent him is mostly built up from our library of character and background assets we've accumulated from visual novel project, but Deryl also has his own takes on a lot of the style details, so differences do emerge.

Volume 1 Cover (first try):

I liked it as much as I disliked it. Kelly gave off the right Kelly vibes to me, but something was seriously wrong with Stephanie's posture and we weren't able to fix it.

Volume 1 Cover (second try):

I didn't like this one at all, and attempts to resolve it at each stage turned into me and Deryl arguing back and forth over interpretations. Decided to return back to the previous cover, keep what felt like it was working and try to repaint the rest.

Volume 1 Cover (third try):

With the redone Stephanie, I felt this one was good enough to send to MikeWe for typesetting.

Volume 2 Cover (first try):

This one nailed everything on the first try and got sent straight to MikeWe for typesetting.

Volume 3 Cover (first try):

Likewise, was pretty pleased with the way this one turned out and sent it directly to MikeWe for typesetting.

Volume 4 Cover (first try):

This turned out... okayish. Some of the finer details look great upon closer inspection, but overall I don't feel like it really impresses or holds up to the wow factor of the first three covers that really grab you.

Volume 4 Cover (second try): IN PROGRESS

Went in a completely different direction with this, didn't have a lot of confidence in Deryl having patience to retry the Chloe / Stephanie hallway scene immediately after us bickering back and forth over exactly that for weeks. Obviously this one's still only in sketch & color test phase, but I think it's very promising!

Please share your thoughts! Or other scenes you'd like to see, Deryl is great with his pricing so if we do wind up combining volumes and having more illustrations than we need, we'll just have art on the back of the books, too.

I do really want to get a big group illustration of everyone that we can have display when you line up the spines of the books on the shelves, but mostly just seeing what we get for now. Deryl's also done work for us on the RE: Trailer Trash cover illustrations, I feel like we have one hit and one miss over there.