Exercise: Making a mock up

Exercise: Making a mock up

This exercise asked me to take a book from my shelf and mock up the front cover for it. The books on my book shelf are mostly graphic novels. I chose Infinity. This is a series of graphic novels by Marvel Comics which tells the story of Mad Titan Thanos.

I had not completed an illustration for this project so I will be doing one especially for this exercise. I wanted to capture the meaning of the story, something I really enjoy when other comic artists do. Quite a lot of comic book covers, especially superhero comics want to fill the page with the characters in the book or just have their faces on it. I wanted to go in the opposite direction, I wanted to have my cover show the meaning behind the story in an illustration that was also visually appealing. I wanted to do my best at achieving that.

Here are my two pages of sketching, I first started with a bullet point list of who Thanos was. This was a smaller scale brainstorm but achieved the same goal. This is an element of research that I think really benefits me, taking some time to list out my thoughts onto paper is a way of keeping me focused and also a way of making sure I remember each idea I come up with.

THANOS
- Overlord
- Wants to bring peace
- "Growth will come to those after death"
- BALANCE
- SACRIFICE
- Wants peace and then to watch the sun set (Not in the list but an important thing reference on the page)

These were the most important things I could think of regarding Thanos. His whole mission is to wipe out half the universe so the other half can prosper. After doing this he wants to watch the sunset over a grateful universe.

On the page I drew symbols of both Peace and Balance, a dove and scales, along with the setting sun I wanted these to be the key elements of my illustration. I completed a few thumbnail sketches, the first was having Thanos watching over the sun, however I considered this too literal. I then had the idea of having literal balance on the page through my layout. I could have everything symmetrical and split down the middle. The whole page would be balanced perfectly.

This is Thanon's Gauntlet, there is 6 stones, each stone is linked to an element of the universe. I sketched out a thumbnail of the gauntlet as the cover, after all it is Thanos's weapon and the tool used to achieve this balance. As I was sketching I had the idea of having the middle stone as the setting sun. This would tie in that element of the story. It would serve two purposes.

Infinity Gauntlet

Sketching Page 1

                                                  Sketching Page 2

On the second page of sketching I played on the infinity gauntlet idea more. I decided to slim down the illustration, instead of illustrating the whole of the gauntlet I would just draw the stones, this would allow the reader to imagine and piece them together, It would also make good use of the negative space. I think this would achieve the same effect as a complex illustration of the gauntlet. Also I wanted the middle stone to be the setting sun so trying to combine those two ideas would be harder. I feel this way it might be more obvious where if the stone in the gauntlet was a large sun like object it would confuse people more.

Here is the sketch I completed on my ipad, I used a pencil brush, this allowed me to be rough with my sketches as if I was sketching on normal paper. 

Here is the final piece. I created the background so it was balanced and equal, I chose black and white, not only because they have such good contrast, but because they tie in with the story. In Thanos's eyes he his killing half the universe so the other half can have peace. The black half represents the side that died and the white half represents the half that has supposed peace. I when added the names of the writers and the publishing logo.

Overall I am happy with my final piece, I think it captures the ideas behind the Infinity War story and I think on the whole is a strong illustration. I worked with the ipad for this whole illustration and I really enjoyed this process, I want to still work with traditional forms of art but I will use my Ipad as much as possible as I think this way has a lot of potential.