SHADOW TWINS: The Evolution of Cover Art

SHADOW TWINS: The Evolution of Cover Art

Just a brief post featuring the various iterations of SHADOW TWINS cover art. I like to think my improvement is noticeable and that my vision for what is represented in the art becomes clearer with each version.

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SHADOW TWINS Cover Concept 1

In this version I was going for a sort of duality of self approach, but I wasn’t completely sure what it would look like. I went with a generic look at an eye and played around with a selection of fonts until I found something I felt might fit the mood of the story (at this point SHADOW TWINS was still one book).

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SHADOW TWINS Cover Concept 2

I did this one a little while after the first concept cover, this time with a much clearer vision in mind. The scene depicted on the cover is one straight out of the book and a pretty important one at that. It’s been a favorite of mine for a while, partly because I had a lot of fun writing it, partly because of how emotional it is, and mostly because the character in on the cover—Remulus—is a favorite of mine to write.

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SHADOW TWINS Cover Concept 3

The above was the first cover I did in Autodesk Sketchbook, which was drastically better than the program I’d been using initially. This scene wasn’t necessarily one in the book, but it did fit the general tone. Here we have a cloaked and hooded character (presumably Vare or Remulus) delving in the darkness of Ouran’an, confronting something wrought by the initial mîrkûr plague that destroyed Ouran’an.

Vultures Cover
SHADOW TWINS Cover Concept 4

Concept number four came about a little more than a month ago, again with Autodesk. At that point I had decided to split SHADOW TWINS into three novellas or short novels (depends on the final word count for each book, obviously), primarily because a) my revisions (practically rewrites) had made it much easier to present the story as such b) it felt a lot more manageable from a writing perspective, and c) I wanted to. Again, the idea of a duality of self was something I found interesting, especially in the context of the story and the mental illness the protagonist, Theailys, deals with. The cover, therefore, represents Theailys and the voices in his head. Because of that, as well as the personal problems my other characters deal with, it felt appropriate to dub this volume VULTURES.

Vultures Cover
SHADOW TWINS Cover Concept 5
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SHADOW TWINS Cover Concept 6

Covers five and six don’t differentiate from cover four much in the way of concept. They’re just much more polished versions, the latter doubling down in the idea of duality of self with the inversion of the front cover on the back. Cover six is by far my favorite.