Day: March 9, 2016

I have begun to design my front cover.

First of all I needed to draw a giraffe that I want to go on the front. I noticed that the four front covers of children’s books that I looked at tended to have one main character and possibly another or some detail with it on the front. I have decided to put George on the front of mine looking very unhappy. I gave him cartoon style eyes instead of standard giraffe ones as I want his face to appeal to young children. This is my drawing of George which I will scan in:

This is an idea for the front cover of my book. The photo of the giraffe will of course be replaced with my drawing. I like the hand-written style font that I have chosen. I want to have a mustard background but will have to see how this goes with my drawing as it is a similar colour to giraffe fur.

Here are some screenshots of front cover designs that I like from the Waterstones website:

Common occurrences with the front covers:

• Large, centralised title
•  Author’s name smaller than title
• Bright backgrounds (single colour)
• Quirky illustrations of animals
• Top 2 typefaces are hand-drawn style
• Bottom two typefaces are more traditional
• Small details like wind and a fly added
• Simplistic!

Now that I have created my story, I have worked out that I need 2 other characters for George the giraffe to ask about his spots to. Today I have been using the graphics tablet again to draw some other African animals that could be used in my story.

This is my snake:

I might change the colours a little but I am quite happy with this – I wanted an evil looking snake and feel it looks okay.

Update:

These are all using my colour scheme. I think I like the middle and right designs the most.

My meerkat:

and the 2 characters I am not going to use: