Sunday: Covering Eel Mansions and Superbowl Tips

Superbowl Sundays are pretty great if you’re into football. They maybe even better if you’re not… A lot of places that would normally be packed on Sunday become deserted when the game begins. For example, did you know skiing becomes a close to solitary affair once everyone trades slopes for couches? Consider that a hot tip for the next Superbowl Sunday.

It’s always a cause for celebration when a new cartoonists moves to your town. When Derek Van Gieson arrived in Minneapolis I was pretty excited. We were both MOME contributors and I really liked his work. Almost immediately we started to plan some kind of project Derek could do for Uncivilized Books. That project became Eel Mansions. Eel Mansions was the first time UB undertook a serialization of a larger story (well with the exception of serializing my own Trans-Stories… but that collection is not out… so I guess it doesn’t count… yet!) and nurtured it into a collected edition. I couldn’t be happier with the results.

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Derek’s narrative is loaded with pop culture references, from the Moomin-like Doomin, through the Sienkiewicz New Mutants, to Jack Kirby, Star Wars, Lizard Lords and beyond! I won’t even mention the music references (here’s a taste) because I don’t even know half of them. Part of the fun is excavating those references, influences and easter eggs. Almost from the start the series got small but fiercely loyal following dedicated to disentangling the pop cultural puzzle. Have you seen these epic reviews!? When came time to collect the series into a book… the cover became a serious design problem. I wanted the cover to express the multiplicity of characters and narratives inside… without overloading the cover. What followed was pile of cover ideas, some from me, some from Derek. Some were more abstract, some focused on single characters, some on many. We went back and forth many times…

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Frankly we were getting close to print time and neither of us I was 100% satisfied with any of the covers. Panic!

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this was the final cover almost up until the very end:

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At the last possible minute Derek came up with what turned out to be the perfect cover . It was eye-catching, simple and classic. I guess necessity is the mother of invention.

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Anyway, the book is available now get it here or from your favorite book shop.

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Trans Terra update:

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Getting close!

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Beta Testing Cover Process Part 6

So, I’m continuing the cover process for the Beta Testing the Apocalypse cover. Previous parts: 123, 4, 5. In the last post, I was showing the evolution of the color. This time I’m focusing on the type design.

This was the first iteration. I wanted to typographically mirror the ‘beta testing’ concept by having some kind of wireframe version of the type present… it was a little too much.

I still wanted they type to be somehow active… but not quite as hyperactive as here.

This is pretty close to what I settled on. The drawing had so much going on in it, that I decided the type needed to be more subtle and clean… so the two elements won’t compete with each other.

Beta Testing Cover Process Part 5

The next task was color. I started out by blocking out areas that were closer to the viewer… more in focus.

I ended up subdividing the line art into three ‘layers’ apparent below. Initially I wanted a limited 2-3 color palette… but it quickly became obvious that the detail demanded something else…

I eventually settled on this general color palette… but it still needed more.

This is how the final color scheme ended up.

Beta Testing Cover Process Part 4

If you’re just joining us, check out parts 123.
It took me a while to work up the nerve to ink this thing. Normally I would’ve inked most of the building with rules & rapidographs. But I decided against it… Since everything was so rigidly planned out, I wanted to have a more organic line in the finishing process. Click on the image to super-size.