Cwtam - Nelchee's sketchblog

SFera book cover

Recently I got a proposal to make a cover for a book that SFera, croatian SF & fantasy society, publishes yearly. It was the kind of job I was really happy to do.
After hearing the theme (and probable title of the book) I figured it won't be that easy to think of a proper concept... 13th circle of abyss.
Here's how I did it.

For the first several days I mostly did just thinking and drawing tiny thumbnails in my sketchbook.

I had a general idea: some kind of vertical tunnel, a protagonist who is in great peril, and some mysterious creatures lurking about.
After some more thinking and sketching, I ended up with a person falling down through disappearing stairs.

Of course, this is not the kind of sketch you can send to the editor. So I made a cleaner (not too detailed) sketch, and a roughly colored version.

The sketch was approved, so I met with my friend Maja for a photo shoot. After digging through her closet, we managed to find something that won't stand out too much. I thought there's no need for historical or futuristic styling.
I kept some 15 photos that were usable, but in the end only 2 or 3 were really good.

For a while I thought I would paint the stairs, but it just didn't work. I didn't have any decent photos of my own, so I bought a really good one from iStockphoto.

When I was ready to begin, I set up the file to the specified size, drew the guidelines to help me place key elements correctly, and started working on the actual manipulation.

Some elements of this work were photographic (girl, stairs, wall texture), and others were painted (girl's ponytail, mouth, creatures in the background).
And here's the finished work.

Here are some details at 50% size:

Posted on 02.04.2007 02:30 CET in: photomanipulation, wip, work | Comments (7)