A Stick Is A Sword Post #1

Today for my first post of actual work I will show some of the work for "A Stick Is A Sword". Story wise it is about a boy from a world similar to ours where there is still knights and adventure. He has been left home alone and must find a way to cope with his boredom and sadness about his family not being around.

A. Basic thumbnails to the first 3 illustrations in the story. I wanted to push the idea of the main char. in his regualr clothes, and his imagination as a knight with these.

B. I wanted to steer away from the sideways view and went for a 3/4 view of the character. A color comp soon followed. I decided to bring in some more reds for the final to show off his firey spirt.

C. Basic character sketches that i decided to follow up for the final designs. The knight pages were lost to a terrible coffee spill :( .

D. Final cover sketches. I decided to add hair in the final painting to add some more spunk to the character.

E. Super thumbs for the 2nd and 3rd illustartion. I wanted to really show the difference from the real world and the boys mind clearly.

Here are the first two pages of illustrations as they will appear in the book so far:

Front cover image. As stated before I really wanted to show both the boy and his imagination so there would be no confusion later in the story.

Filler page before the title still trying to drive in the idea of the difference in the real world and imagination. The next page will be him in a similar pose but as a confident knight and his stuffed lizard as a trusty companion.