The Eyrie

gigidigi:

First, thank you so much for all the likes and reblogs on that last post! You guys are cool!

I got a question asking about my process for the title pages, and my response was “I’ve got a bunch of in-progress images for the Chapter 1 cover, so I’ll just wait until that goes up to post them!” But then I realized that I actually don’t have a bunch of in-progress images for the Chapter 1 cover—just one sketch and the final image. O-Oops.

Instead, here are some process images for Chapter 0’s title page.

1. The rough sketches don’t really go through a lot of evolution, because usually I have an idea of what the composition’s going to look like before I start. (B-Because I’ve had, like, five months to daydream about it.) Originally, I was going to have the image include Brambleby and Cosmo, but I decided I didn’t really need to cram everybody in there.

2. This is as final as my line drawings usually get. Cucumber was going to be ~freakin’ out~ but I thought that might be giving away too much.

3. At this point, there’s a really rough value study. Lighting is a huge compositional element, and Peridot holding that stone is the most important thing, so she’s the brightest area of the image. Almond was going to be just as bright, but I thought it was distracting, so I ended up toning that down.

4. The color thumbnail doesn’t always match the value study, because I figure out a lot of the values when I’m working in color. That’s…probably not the correct way to do things, but I’m impatient and working in black and white for too long makes me get antsy.

5. I was going to have Almond smiling in this image, but I thought it looked too much like she and Peridot were on the same side, so I decided against it. Cucumber was also going to be holding his wand, but…well.

6. That’s it! I don’t really know how helpful this is since I’m not sure how to put my process into words, but I hope it sheds a little bit of light on how I do things, for anyone who was curious.

Edit: Oh, that’s right—I forgot to mention Chapter 0 was going to be Chapter 0.5 for about five seconds. THE SECRET IS OUT