This cover was kind of a weird process to make; the initial idea was a series of shots of Sareena, Candice, Alex & Xandy, and Hazel each in a particular position with them kind of fading into each other. We were having some scheduling issues with things and that led to wanting to simplify the idea, which eventually led to me on my own trying to do a cover that consisted entirely of a calendar with various marks on it symbolizing things that will be happening over the course of the chapter.
That came out pretty boring-looking though, so we wound up instead going with this film reel idea. The cover I had done though was reworked into the chapter's logo... but we decided it looked too tacky, between the film reel and the choice of colors the whole thing looked very 80s. There was also a pretty huge amount of empty space on the cover which further exacerbated it, so that led to going in to revise it further, ending up adding the second real with Ivy and this other person; the original idea was to only add him but we ended up seeing enough of the other reel to also warrant sticking Ivy in there.
If you don't recognize this guy I can understand why, we've only seen him in one page ages ago -
At a point he was actually going to pop up again in Blue Cold (and Alex did talk about him briefly in Into the Blue) but it didn't fit with the way the pacing of the chapter was coming out so yeah, it's pretty overdue seeing him again and it probably warrants the reminder.
In either case, the final chapter logo is kind of a rework of the old one; updated it to look more sleek and like an icon for a calendar on a phone or something similar, communicating the same idea without just straight-up being a cheap-looking wall calendar like was used before. The icons here were mostly reused from that, though some of them were tweaked or changed a bit. Shout out to that special cameo from Alan Dracula there.
So yeah, kind of a weird, messy story behind this cover coming together, which does feel kind of appropriate for the chapter itself. Strap in for that I guess, this one's probably one of the more ambitious weird little experiments we've done.
Heh. It's weird, both this and the Blues chapter have covers that required a lot of re-working and going back to do details again and again until we were satisfied. Sorta neat; especially since I wanna get Blues covers cooler-looking. A lot of thought went into how to get this one looking as eye-catching as possible, and the effect is just great. Favorite bit is Xandy and Alex hugging....
Funny story; that guy with the purple face marking? I didn't realize how much of him would end up covered. I wound up drawing his entire torso under that film strip. We briefly talked about maybe switching his and Ivy's placement just because so much work went into it, but it just looks too good having Ivy behind her daughter.
Hm. Minor thing that might've popped if I'd thought of it at the time; should've had Ivy looking to her left. Candace is looking to the right and it would've nicely implied they were out of sync.
I draw Hazel with the "open shirt to show my abs" look because giving a close look at how he's meant to be dressed in the first page of this chapter. Now I feel kinda dumb because I like his new look way more. Get a look next time, folks. ^^
That came out pretty boring-looking though, so we wound up instead going with this film reel idea. The cover I had done though was reworked into the chapter's logo... but we decided it looked too tacky, between the film reel and the choice of colors the whole thing looked very 80s. There was also a pretty huge amount of empty space on the cover which further exacerbated it, so that led to going in to revise it further, ending up adding the second real with Ivy and this other person; the original idea was to only add him but we ended up seeing enough of the other reel to also warrant sticking Ivy in there.
If you don't recognize this guy I can understand why, we've only seen him in one page ages ago -
wrightasrayne.thecomicseries.com/comics/694
At a point he was actually going to pop up again in Blue Cold (and Alex did talk about him briefly in Into the Blue) but it didn't fit with the way the pacing of the chapter was coming out so yeah, it's pretty overdue seeing him again and it probably warrants the reminder.
In either case, the final chapter logo is kind of a rework of the old one; updated it to look more sleek and like an icon for a calendar on a phone or something similar, communicating the same idea without just straight-up being a cheap-looking wall calendar like was used before. The icons here were mostly reused from that, though some of them were tweaked or changed a bit. Shout out to that special cameo from Alan Dracula there.
So yeah, kind of a weird, messy story behind this cover coming together, which does feel kind of appropriate for the chapter itself. Strap in for that I guess, this one's probably one of the more ambitious weird little experiments we've done.