24th February 2012
Being one of the lucky few to read the early draft, we discussed the scene John wanted for the print & web copies, then set to work.
The brief was to create a full wrap around cover, with the focal point at the front and center.
Many things came into the initial conversation; regarding the mood, the lighting, the season the appearance of the brook, (the centrepiece location of the story), perspective & scale. From here a collection of reference was gathered to mould the scene, including forts, towers, environments & characters.
From here came the decision making, using thumbnail compositions, sampled colour tints, and font trials. This would lead onto production of the final artwork.
Whilst the story includes zombies, at it’s heart it’s not a traditional horror/zombie book, so we tread carefully not to sell it in that context. The lighting in particular was a challenge, with the scene set at dusk, to set the mood it was extremely tempting to add deep long shadows to create the atmosphere. This would however have been against the story, so lighting was kept minimal and the composition was used to add any ‘spooky’ value. The central character was also something that was played with a few times. I wanted it to be questionable whether he was in fact a zombie or not, so the typical zombie stance was left more subtle.
The Returners is a great read, and without doubt definitely worth checking out. The author is kindly offering the full read for free at his site (check the links below), so that’s the perfect excuse to have a gander! Should you enjoy the tale, donations are accepted, as well as print copies available as the digital download on Kindle. All bases covered!
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