The Speaker

Client

AD Kristin Smith Boyle, Penguin Random House

Description

Book cover for a young-adult novel written by the author Traci Chee.  The Speaker is a sequel to the NY Times bestselling fantasy, The Reader; it is magical and super female-powered adventurous story.  I had to deliver a whimsical backdrop for the cover with many arrow heads and mountains as we see many occasions in the story.

Seriously, this one has much faster tempo, there’re many fighting scenes that I enjoyed very much.  I don’t normally read fictions, so this project was wonderful getaway from my normal reading habit (I read non-fictional books all the time haha).  So pirates, magics, raging oceans and big ole ships, arrows and swards, silver and gold, and young love interest between some characters,,, are very new to my reading habit!

I used our first book cover template to start my very first thumbnail.  The initial idea for the photograph on this cover was to have two characters (The Reader was a close-up photograph of a young lady, the heroine, Sofia.  However, the team knew for sure that they wanted mountains, arrows, and forests. 

Process

Then soon, I figured that they want to see more of the arrow heads; two sketches after the thumbs…

It’s getting there!

Arrows need to be more sharp.

 This is our final sketch, and it’s all good to go for inking.

 This is our final sketch, and it’s all good to go for inking.

And here is the final drawing;

It is great working with AD Kristin and Editor Stacey, and their team in Penguin Random House.  I finally got to meet the author, Traci, at her book release party, and it’s been such a wonderful journey working with them for the series!

*Update*