Mock posters/covers for two of @manofthepipis's fics, Beyond Repair and [System Rebooting: Please stand by.].
I absolutely adored both of these stories and I had a lot of fun playing with shape, composition, contrast and symbolism when illustrating covers for them. :)
Versions with back covers + yapping about my design process under cut:
Beyond Repair was the first I read so it was also the first designed. When designing a cover for a story, the first things I consider are mood and symbolism. Id categorize Beyond Repair as a drama/romance, and it's pretty angsty, especially in the first half, so I used primarily black and blue, which also matches the primary colors in Castle Town (the setting). It's realy, realy easy to find symbolism for Spamton and Tenna in general, but for this fic specifically I felt cracked glass was the most significant. (Like, a big thing in the story is being/feeling broken, so it fits symbolically. Also there are multiple instances of glass being broken). Spamton's glasses also play a major role in the story so he's posed in a way that highlights them (in some of my early sketches for this cover it was just his glasses floating in tv glow). The shading style also helps highlight Spmaton, as he and his glasses were shaded with a soft blending brush while most of the rest of the cover has a speckled texture.
The shit that happens in chapters 8 and 9 is probably the most intense part of this fic and it had me on the edge of my seat all the way though, so I wanted to depict that for the cover, but in a way that isn't a spoiler. I posed Spamton in an abstract sort of way to show off his glasses & be as tringle as possible, and drew Tenna in a way where his shirt collar could also be read as a tv stand. In the story the cracks are not described to be this extensive, but I extended them anyway to imply a facial expression.
For a little added symbolism, I included a cracked heart and a star with it's arms cut off and sewn on to further drive the broken damaged imagery. The quote on the back cover is from chapter 1 and kinda sums up the whole first act of the story before you hit the watershed in chapter 9.
I designed the cover for System Rebooting next. I already used a boatload of blue and black in Beyond Repair's cover so I went for something different here. Neo's silhouette takes up a lot of space on the cover, as it does in the story, but Spamton and the title are given heavy contrast in order to stand out from it. I gave Jevil an overall lower contrast from Spamton in order for their silhouettes to be more clear, and I used the same shading trick I did with Beyond Repair's cover here to. (Jevil has soft shading, Spamton is cel shaded, Neo is speckled.)
The Addisons also feature a lot in the fic so they took up the back cover. They were kinda annoying to render in monochrome since the main way to differentiate them is color. All the stuff on the back cover is placed inside pop up add boxes, since that's what they are. Spamton has a box too, but it's empty and on the verge of being closed. Even if you can't read wing dings, the tab is still easily associated with Spamton since it and he are the only things on the cover that are pure black. Survey also has a different expression from the other Addisons to make them stand out as the pov character/most affected by Spamton's absence.
It was a little harder to find a perfect quote for this fic than it was for Beyond Repair, but I liked this one from chapter 9. Sort of summarizes the Addison's early sentiment about Spamton while also being vague and kinda ominous.
