Volume 1 - cover colour ideas (Patreon)

This afternoon I finally persuaded myself to come up with the colours for the Heartstopper Volume 1 cover. Colouring is my absolute least favourite part of drawing, which is no doubt why it took me ages to persuade myself to start this!!

So I went with the close-up cover design idea from the last set of ideas. Thank you all so much again for your input on that - people's favourites were pretty much split evenly between all the ideas, but it was really useful to hear your reasoning and which ones you thought would work best and why.

I also decided that the shoe design would be PERFECT as the back cover, and the third design would be perfect as the inside title page (not pictured here, but it's design 3 from this set of designs).

So now that I'd chosen a design, it was time to colour!

Here's what I came up with. I'm happy to hear your thoughts, but I'll start of by saying that I am 99% sure I am going with idea #3 - I'll explain why in a minute! 

I'll tell you some of my thoughts about each of the three ideas:

1. This was the first idea I tried - just normal flat colours with a little bit of shading over the top. I knew I wanted to keep the colouring very simplistic, no matter what I did (as that's sort of my style), and using flat colours and a digital paintbrush this idea turned out looking quite cartoonish and almost kind of... anime? I like it and think it looks pretty great actually, but ultimately I just don't think it's right for the style of the book. My main concern here is making sure that the cover really represents the content and style of the comic!

2. I went again for simple colours but this time with watercolour (still digital obviously - I rarely do traditional drawing/painting). I like the soft pastel look of this one, but I still feel like it looks a little bit flat and dull even? Anyway, again, I like it, but I don't think it really represents the book very well.

3. As soon as I came up with this I think I knew that it was the one!! The greyscale textures perfectly represent the actual art style of the book, while also expressing the soft, peaceful tone of the story. I used brushes that I actually use when drawing the comic. I also chose a pastel pink colour to be featured on the cover, just to have a little something that would stand out! I might change this to pastel aqua green - not sure yet. Either way - I think I want the pink (or green) colour on the cover to be foil? If the printer does that, anyway! I imagine that the colour theme will change for each volume, and that the spine will be mostly that colour (so we get a nice multi-coloured set of spines, once all the volumes are out!). I also did the back cover for this idea, and absolutely love how that's turned out too. I just really love this one and hope you lot do too!

Moving forward from here, I'm going to have a further play around with idea #3, moving the text and trying different ideas with the leaves maybe, seeing if pastel green suits this book better with this volume, etc. I want to make sure I get the absolute perfect design. But I'm so happy with this one and I really love it!

Hope you find this interesting and let me know if you have any thoughts! 

I REALLY want to get this book designed by the end of the month, so you'll probably be hearing from me again about this very soon :)

Alice xxx