Cosmic Chaos Cover Process

Happy release week for my latest Spidey book! In keeping with tradition with the past two books, here's a condensed look at my process for creating the cover of this newest one. 😊🖌️🎨

CONCEPTS

As usual, I sent my publisher (in this case, Abrams + Marvel) a few concepts of what I think might make a striking cover. This is our third outing so I kinda had a feel for what they might be looking for at this point; something similar to the past two books but with a slightly different pose for Spidey to keep things fresh. Knowing they were going to stamp a "Original Graphic Novel" badge on there, I decided to work that into my composition this time. I also placed some mock cover matter on there to make sure that wasn't going to interfere with anything either.

Some of you might recognize concept #2 up there from one of my rejected concepts for QUANTUM QUEST. I really dug that classic Spider-Man pose and thought it might work with Silver Surfer's board since it plays a part in COSMIC CHAOS. It also saved me a little time reusing something I already drew!

THE WINNER

And I'm glad I DID decide to reuse that particular pose because that's the one my publisher decided on. The only difference was swapping the positions of Drax and Star-Lord, using the Say Anything boombox pose for the latter. I still liked Drax hanging off of something so decided the subtitle not only would suffice, but be a much more fun idea as well. Happy that my art director was cool with it.

LINEWORK

Now that I had a rough drawing of the cover I could get to work polishing it up. I felt Surfer in that upper corner was both a tad distracting and confusing since Spidey is already using his board that I decided to just remove him completely. With all the Guardians, there was already so much going on as it was. Above is my blue-line rough for the cover.

And my digital inks overtop that rough. I added a little planet for Drax to hang off of as a placeholder until the cover matter got put in. It still makes me giggle.

Just in case anything needed to be nudged around (as well as for spot-coating purposes), I drew my linework on three different layers: Spidey, the Guardians, and the background planets. Here I've color-coded those different layers so you can see just that.

COLOR

With my linework done I can finally get to coloring everything. These are my flats, choosing variations of page interior hues to make sure all the characters stand out depending on what they're standing (or hanging) in front of.

Next I color in a bit of lighting and shadow. I'm not completely concerned with the accuracy of either of those things. Again, I just want to make sure the character pop as much as possible. I hand lettered the Guardians of the Galaxy logo so it would mesh better with my brushy lines.

I then color in some of the linework for added depth and give it all a nice starry background to make sure everyone knows our heroes are in spaaaaace!

FINAL

Lastly, that finished colored illustration is sent to my art director who pops in all the cover matter. I use some masking to make sure Drax's hand lines up okay and slightly nudge a few elements away from the green spine.

At this point, there's not a whole lot I can change so hopefully everything lined up correctly.

Eh, close enough.

THE TRILOGY

Like I mentioned yesterday, COSMIC CHAOS wraps up a trilogy of sorts for this Spidey adventure. All of the covers were designed to feel like they belonged together and I'm happy to say I think they look pretty nice paired up next to each other. Although there's quite a few neighborhoods in the Marvel Universe I haven't gotten to play around in yet. Maybe one or two more books in the future?

 ❤️🕸️