Illustration Contest: Design Your Book Cover

Everyone did a great job for the last contest. It took me a while to decide where to go next for this next week’s contest. I’ve been debating between moving along with book illustration or continuing loosely related subjects chosen at random ‘whim’. Sorry for the delay but I’ve decided to give a very different challenge for this next contest.


Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to come up with a cover design for the book you’re interested in completing. You could reference other books you love to figure out a composition you enjoy but for this week’s contest I’m looking for a book cover design. You could submit up to three designs, rough submissions, and I’ll post them for others to comment on. That way we can find out from the community what is a preferred cover and for a future contest you’ll come up with a more polished version. Good luck; you have until:

Deadline: Midnight, Saturday, October 9th, 2010.

Character Design Contest

Here's the entries for the character design contest. There were some great entries, good job everyone.

My picture was inspired by Nate’s story that he’s currently working on and the hardworking fairies in it. I’m not good at faces but I love costumes so I wanted to explore what they would wear.

Aubrey S

I wanted to work on giving my character emotion this time around and also see if I could create the same character twice in different settings and different angles and see if they really looked like the same character. I am happy with the emotions - one being quiet and focused, and the other proud and excited. I am not sure if they look at all alike though. Thank you for the book ideas. I am excited to learn more.

Kristi G

I was exploring the character design of the main character of a story I’m currently writing for my baby daughter. It’s all about the Tooth Fairy and how she becomes famous all over the world. I’m pretty happy with where I have gotten to, although it may not be the final product.

Nate S

Here are some quick sketches followed by explorations of the gestures applied to the character designs:

Scott W

Illustration Contest: Character Design

Great work everyone in the last contest. It's fun for me to see how everyone is progressing individually. Keep up the hard work. For this next quick draw contest we're going to center it around developing characters for a story. (Thank you Scott for the idea.) In this contest you're to come up with a character, could be for a story, and to work on developing who they are or how they look. Possible interpretations of the contest could include: various designs in appearance, different poses to explore personality, different clothes or coverings, or whatever else you come up with, just keep it centered on a character.

I'm excited to see what you come up with, so please start working. Our deadline is Saturday, September 18th, midnight. Good luck and happy drawing.

Story Backgrounds

Hey everyone, thank you for your contributions. I hope you felt good about what you got done. If not, well that's totally fine. That's what next time is for. Hopefully we all learned something about ourselves and the process and can get it working for us next time. I liked what we received. Here are our submissions.

Becca W

Kristi G

Liezl G - The Lion and the Lion Tamer

Nate S - Picture I wanted to paint, inspired by the mysteries of China.

Quincy G - Mommy and Daddy

Scott W

Scott W