New Book Cover Artwork and Design – Drawings and Sketches
The Relaunch of The Incredible Adventures of Merri Berri Blue – Tutu Much by Sunday Erickson
Hey there, just thought I’d finally add another post here and show you what I’ve been up to…well, a bit of what I’ve been doing for quite some time now…working on creating a new cover for the previous book, which is already out on Amazon and can be found here on Amazon.
The book I’m talking about came out last year on Thanksgiving Day…as some of you may or may not know. Anyways, to make a long story short, our little creative team, consisting of Sunday Erickson, Ph.D., and Dr. Carl Welliver, Ph.D., and I, all agreed that it’d be best to change a few things after the fact…haha, I guess hindsight is 20/20 now isn’t it?
It wasn’t until recently that we realized that maybe the title and cover art weren’t sending the right message to would be readers…people might be thinking that the book is about ballerinas or tutus because of the “Tutu Much” part of the title when in fact, it has nothing to do with ballerinas or their dresses, lol. Tutu is the name of the dog in the story…
Plus, I never was actually happy with the original cover art…I didn’t feel it was all that compelling to get people interested in the book, which is what the cover art is supposed to do, right? So, back to the drawing board we went…
And, now the book is soon to be relaunching on Amazon as….
The Incredible Adventures of Merri Berri Blue and Me – A Never Ending Friendship by Sunday Erickson
The book is basically the same book on the inside…same illustrations and story, just so you know if you already bought the original…
However, the Introduction has been rewritten along with an added Bonus Section on Sparks of Spirit, along with the new cover art…which I’ll be sharing a bit of the drawing and sketches here a bit further down.
Anyways, there have been quite a few different changes on the new release of the book, “and Me” was added to the first part and another major change is found in the second part of the title…“A Never Ending Friendship” is now in place of the “Tutu Much” which was the second part, or subtitle of the previous release.
It took a lot more time to get this one done, but we’re all pretty happy with the design and I hope our readers are too…
Below are a few images of how the process went…showing what it looked like after doing some drawing and sketching of the ideas…
Of course these few images are showing only maybe a quarter of all the process involved in drawing out the rough shapes of Lucy in her wheelchair, the mirror frame, and the image of Lucy in the mirror…
especially since Lucy in the mirror, her older self, just had to decide to change her stance or position!
Any other changes you notice, besides the older Lucy standing a different way?
Find it yet?
No?
Well, moving the “mirror Lucy’s” way of standing also required moving the position of her arms as well. It looked kinda silly the way her arms had been positioned once she was standing in a different pose…maybe not quite silly, but awkward!
That is one thing that I’ve realized makes a bit of a difference, how different parts of the body such as the arms and legs are positioned or the head is facing can make it look just plain old AWKWARD…it’s best to stick to what looks “natural” or normal for where the character is facing, the mood the person is in, and what message you’re trying to convey with what is going on in the scene.
Did I have an idea of what message I wanted to convey?
Why, yes of course I did…thanks to the team brainstorming ideas we went over and discussed in quite a few interesting sessions over in our little group meetings! However, it’ll take awhile more of drawing to get there, but get there it will!
Anyways, I hope I make some sense here, lol…
Join me for the next post, where I’ll be sharing some more of the work-in-progress images of the new cover…
*Update- You can find the next post at the link below:
Book Cover Design Artwork – Part 2 of Drawing & Sketching Book Cover Artwork
And, if you’d like to check out the original cover, you can find it here on New Book Releases and Illustrating a Children’s Book
You are also invited to check out the daily or pretty close to daily inspirational blogs, book updates, and book reviews written by the rest of the awesome team I’m part of which includes Sunday, Merri Berri Blue, and Dr. Carl over at Merri Berri Blue Publishing.
That’s it for now folks!
Very nice Sherry!! I’ll have to look into getting the book in the near future. I love the horse at the end of your posting also!! ❤
Hi Darlene!
Thank you so much for checking it out!
That sounds awesome, I do hope you enjoy reading the book when you get it…I wrote another post here Book Cover Design Art – Part 2 of Drawing & Sketching Book Cover Artwork showing the new cover artwork and where you can order it just the other day…just to let everyone know where to find it!
I’ll be posting more here again, since the second book will be coming out soon as well!
Glad you love the horse at the end of the post…that reminds me, I think I forgot to add it on my latest post! I’ll have to fix that, lol.
Thanks again for stopping by Darlene and I hope you have a wonderful day!
Best wishes 🙂 ~Sherry