Do judge a book by its cover (Further development)

Character research and development

Out of all the roughs I designed for the book cover, this concept was my favourite. I feel like it represents the book in the best way and had the most positive responses from peers during a group critique session of our initial ideas. That session was particularly helpful for me as the idea of the history of monsters in a police line up was a good idea, but it diverted from the core concept of the book. I then developed the ideas of the police line up and the concept that shows that monsters are all in your head and merged them together, so the monsters will all be inside a thought bubble. The outcome was the rough in the image above. After doing this I knew this was going to be the idea I will finalise and resolve.

Satan/The Devil

The character satan is mentioned in the book I am illustrating as one of the most iconic and infamous monsters of all time. For this reason I thought it would be appropriate to include him in my line up of the history of monsters. I then decided to sketch out a few different designs to try and figure out which style of the Devil will look best in my cover. 

Clown Image

After drawing so many clown in my visual language tasks, I thought it would be quite suited that I included one in my monster line up. A clown may not be the stereotypical monster but a section of the book 'On Monsters' is all about serial killers. Over time the idea of a clown has changed and due to the clown serial killers that occurred in America, clowns now have very dark and sinister connotations and because of this, I I'm including a clown to my line up of monsters.

Jack the Ripper

Speaking of serial killers, this is one of the most famous due to the fact that he was never caught. As there is a large section of real life human monsters (serial killers) in my book, I think Jack the Ripper is the perfect character to include. I really like the way he has been portraid with the top hat and blade as it created a very sinister atmosphere on the page. I have sketched down a few concepts for his design to see which angle and shape will work best in my line up.

Grim Reaper

The Grim Reaper. He is the image of death. In my opinion he is the ultimate monster. From the second I has the idea of the monster line up, the Grim Reaper had a guaranteed place. I really like the sense of mysteriousness you get from looking at the reaper, the hooded figure and a scythe is known throughout  the world and therefore makes a perfect character for my book cover. Again I have explored  few different shapes and designs to find the best outcome for the cover.  

I have also chosen to include some classic pop culture monsters to my line up such as Dracula, Frankenstein and Zombies. I have done this because the book is about the history of monsters and how they have changed throughout time. Pop culture classic monsters have had a big impact on our view of monsters so I thought it would be a good idea to include iconic characters that people can relate to, because if an illustration is relatable, more people will generally like it.