bad dreams good nightmares

New Chris Grabenstein cover! The timing of this cover is very appropriate for Halloween, so I thought I'd throw it up here. It's like decorating your home for the holidays.

Before I get into that, I must give a huge, sincere thank you to everyone who left a comment, reposted, and help spread the word on my stolen portfolio. I know I am leaving many, many people out, but off the top of my head thanks to the Fenners at Spectrum, Randy Gallegos , Ralph Horsley, Erik Gist, and Jon Shindehette. Forgive me if I left anyone out. There were so many that came to help, and I appreciate it all.

If I can relay any advice or experience from this, it is actually mostly what I got from the great police officer over at the 10th Precinct in NYC.  Surprisingly, theft at these conventions is a regular occurrence, and a person was put in jail at this same convention.  He was saying that the reason they were able to catch this thief  , was because of the strong network of comic-book sellers, and they quickly spread the word to each other and all over the internet, notifying each other of the theft. The thief came back to sell the stolen comic to another collector, and they were able to nail him.  It made me appreciate and realize how important our community of illustrators is, and how we look after one another when the situation calls for it. That is a great thing, and although my work was not recovered, I felt a sense of community for the first time in ages during this debacle. Thank you all again.


Let's get back to the art. Here is the 3rd book I have done for Chris and this series. I feel really lucky to have landed this gig. The imagery is fun, my art director rules, Chris rules, the books are fantastic - easy right? Well, wraparound covers provide their own challenges. You can see in this template how there are several margins , dimensions to follow, and directions to follow. It's also to important to remember your art is not being seen as you create it. As a wrap - you see the right side of the image first in the store - that's the actual cover. The left side becomes the rear of the book jacket.  It is very important to get the main image inside the margins that will appear on the cover , making sure it is not going off into the flaps of the book. I like to work on the focal area first and then spread out from there, making adjustments in Photoshop, moving things around ever so slightly, until everything lines up. We even worked on getting one of the angels on top of the mausoleum to appear on the spine of the book. It's like being an actor in front of a green-screen, trying to hit all the correct marks, and still trying to act simultaneously.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great Halloween!
Scott