Designing the "Will & Whit" Cover

Designing the cover of a book is a challenge.  Because, just like the saying says, it's what people will first judge it on. So I thought I'd share my new book cover along with the process behind it...

Recap: There are a lot of themes in my upcoming graphic novel "Will & Whit," but the most important one is light and dark.  My main character, Wilhelmina (Will), has a passion for making lamps partly because she likes to tinker with old things and partly because she's afraid of the dark.  But when Hurricane Whitney (Whit) comes to town and knocks out the power, she's forced to face her fears and the shadows that come to life around her.

For the cover, originally I thought of using a spotlight and shadow puppets since they're a fun motif that's featured in the story...

  

After feedback from my art director (Chad Beckerman) and editor (Maggie Lehrman) over at Abrams, I changed the design to feature Will's shadow more prominently.  So I made some digital mock-ups...

But the title needed to be more interesting,  so I drew it as something that would hang in Foxxden Antiques. (It's the family business where Will helps out her Aunt.)  And surprisingly we then ditched Will altogether, replacing her instead with a silhouette...

And the folks at Abrams went for it!  Which I found surprising, because neither one of the figures on the cover is Will or Whit.  It's instead foreshadowing a vital scene later in the story.  I worried it was too enigmatic or misleading.  (I mean, the title features two boy's names that are actually girl's names!) But hey, what's wrong with a little mystery??

So here's the final result. Ta-da! It's scheduled for release in May.

And if you look closely....I snuck in a pair of eyes in the bushes on the right side.

{If you find this design process interesting, here's my blog post about making the "Page by Paige" cover!}

I'm DONE penciling "Will & Whit!"

Hooray!!

 

 Ugh, penciling is the most frustrating and challenging part of the whole book production process for me. It requires endless decision making, visualizing the sets and character's movements, getting the characters consistent, designing the locations, rearranging layouts, drawing all those pesky hands and noses, etc. The past few weeks in particular it was getting really hard for me to stay focused with this summer weather, so I am really thankful that this step of the process is DONE.

Last week I took all the penciled pages on a field trip to the Abrams offices over in Manhattan. Check out my book baby, all 182 pages of drawings! It's taken me 3 months of being a hermit in my studio 7 days a week to draw it all out.

 Here's my editor Maggie Lehrman and art director Chad Beckerman, as they scrutinize the book.  I asked them to "look concerned" for this photo, despite the fact that they didn't have many critiques. (Thankfully!) It's a bit scary drawing out a whole book without someone else seeing it.

And I thought I should share a few of the FINISHED penciled pages! My scanner doesn't pick up the blue pencil that well, so these are photos even though they're not the best quality. Shrug.

Here's Will in her room working at her desk, when her shadows first appear. Will ended up looking nothing like my sample drawings of her!

 

Here's Will surprising Reese on her birthday, with her best friends Noel and Autumn...

 

  

Here's Will meeting the kids who are putting on the arts carnival: Blake, Ava, and Desmond.

In some sections I had a lot of fun with the layouts. For instance, when they go mattress rafting I used only trees and water ripples to divide up the panels.

So what's the INKING gonna look like? Well, here's a process shot from one of the first pages I've started inking just this weekend. Very undone, but you can get the idea.

We'll see where things go! It'll take me 3 more months to complete inking, so come November I'll have some more fun show-and-tell. Stay tuned!

 Currently Reading: A Wrinkle in Time (graphic novel)...written by Madeleine L'Engle, adapted and illustrated by Hope Larson