Glass Kanin Cover Art

Hey guys! I thought it would be fun to go over the process of designing the cover art for Glass Kanin. Final product first! 

I first started looking around for an artist last summer, after I'd finished writing the first book of Glass Kanin and sent it off to my beta readers. I perused DeviantArt, Twitter, and r/HungryArtists, which is eventually where I found Marcus Maia. 

His fanart of Elderwood Bard from League of Legends was what sold me that he'd be able to bring a similarly face-less MC to life. 

I approached Marcus, told him my pay range, concept, and timeline, and he happily accepted! 

After going over the basics (color scheme, genre, blurb, important elements to include,) the most important thing I had to do was explain what my main character looked like. Easier said than done when your MC is entirely unique, haha. But I provided him a couple of my own amateur doodles and mostly got my point across. Then I let him go for it, and he provided a couple concept art sketches of Kanin. 

I went with 3 with a few modifications, like a closed top and pointier feet. From there Marucs came up with a couple different cover concepts based on some setting ideas I'd given him. 

I immediately liked how dynamic the first one was, so we zeroed in on that concept. Then he whipped up some line art for the cover!

I loved it! I asked for a couple of tweaks, like making Kanin's topper more physical and less bendy looking, as well as moving Noli from the back of the cover to the front. With those suggestions, he did a flat color cover. 

From there, it was just making small tweaks and watching it come to life!

The title and name were placeholders. I did love the idea behind the glass font, but ultimately it wasn't eye catching enough. 

Some final tweaks involved asking him to brighten up Kanin and the magic, and make the papers on the desk less bright and eye-catchy. I wanted Kanin to be the main star. 

Once that was squared away, I contacted Inorai, a friend from a writing conference and an excellent typographer. She did an amazing job coming up with the final text, and then I officially declared the piece complete!

If you've read this far, I hope you enjoyed learning a bit about the process! I am currently in the middle of doing the same for Book 2, so you can expect a similar post when that book releases. 

Cheers!