Thursday, July 8, 2010

Avalon: The Warlock Diaries

Hello Planet!

I recently finished illustrating the Avalon series for Seven Seas Entertainment. It's been the biggest, longest project I've ever worked on.. I can honestly say I have drawn more baby unicorns than most people ever will. Babieeees!

Now that we've got that out of our system, get serious!! Serious faces!! >: | Because this isn't baby unicorn time at all now. It's time for a new project! Avalon also runs as a series of manga called The Warlock Diaries, which is having its first three volumes compiled into an omnibus. I get to work on the cover! I've asked if we can put up the process work while it's getting put together, and the ocean says yes.

The story in Avalon follows three girls who are called upon to be awesome protectors of Magic, and all those who need magic to survive. Each of the novels takes turns focusing on one of the three, sending them through all kinds of crazy danger and loopy surprises, all of which would inform how the cover for that book would go together. Usually, you would find the heroine of the tale centered in the artwork, and framed by/covered in/next to/surrounded with elements of what made that adventure fantastic. This formula kept the books visually cohesive, so that all of the covers worked together as a whole set.

The Warlock Diaries is still Avalon, but it works a little bit differently. There's a lot of new information, characters and all, but the thing that changes it up the most is how progress is measured. A manga tends to be made up of lots of little victories on the way to a big one, whereas a book is more like the 700 mile drive.

Solve (and illustrate) for X. So it begins!


I posted two of the thumbnails I made for this. On the left, the familiar center-the-characters layout is being observed, though you'll note there's not a whole lot else going on apart from trees and a huge looming shape that may or may not be readable. The upsides to this version would be continuity between the novel covers and the manga cover. The downside is that while this format worked well for the books, it may not really represent the energy, flow, and style of the manga, even if it would be very pretty.

The thumbnail on the right is designed with something a little more manga in mind. It's character soup! The one constant in manga-storytelling, if all else including the sun fails, is going to be character development. While one book could contain four or five "bites" as far as adventures go, the characters move continuously through them. (unless they get explodied for some raisin)

So I'm now in the middle of making a more legible character soup. I'll post that up soon!

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