Basewood Cover Design: Part 3

So far we've seen my very first idea for the Basewood cover and a second round of ideas, which were still trying to show as little of the story as possible.  At this point in the cover design process, I gave up on trying to hide all of the story surprises; anything was fair game!

Up until now, I was composing ideas off the top of my head, but those ideas were running out.  So before I dove into the next round of thumbnails and sketches, I took a trip to the Schulz Library to look at a bunch of book covers.  Whenever I saw one that I thought was interesting, I snapped a photo with my cell phone.  I also took a lap around Amazon.com to grab some book covers from the same genre as Basewood (Adventure/Fantasy).  I compiled the best of these images into a contact sheet which I printed out and taped to my drawing board:

Inspired by these compositions, I dove into another round of sketches, which I tried to make more dynamic and exciting.  Once again, I colored the sketches, mostly because I was having a hard time imagining how these images from Basewood (which is in black and white) would work in color.

 

I really liked the idea of the inset frame in the first drawing, but the guys at L'employé du Moi thought it was too complicated.  As for the rest of these drawings, they thought they were heading in the right direction, but that I could push them a bit farther.  So it was back to the drawing board yet again!

So next week we'll see how far I can push these designs.  Also, with a little help from my friends, I will correct some serious mistakes that I have been making so far!