COVER DESIGN: Animation

My specialization in art books about animation relates to my experience as a director, cartoonist, and educator in the animation arts. Of course, my design approach can be applied to any format of published material for any age that needs fun, engaging design work. 

See also: COVER DESIGN: Pop Culture

Design variations on the cover for Adventure Time: The Art of Ooo. Feeding off of the boundless creativity of this series, I incorporated many adventuresome elements into these design directions. The iconic key art from the title sequence and the treehouse won their spot on the cover, while the graphic yellow storyboard panel design became the case under the dust jacket.

My own cartooning skills were utilized to re-illustrate the cover art and multiple spreads within so that the art was at the required print resolution—an example of the extra value and flexibility that my  experience and insight into the material brings to each project.

Cover design concepts for BoJack Horseman: The Art Before the Horse. Capturing the essence of this emotionally complex comedy series in a graphically exciting image was the goal for these design explorations. BoJack's despondent expression does a lot of the work as he looms over the hills of Hollywoo or frowns as an almost silhouetted void.

I wrote and designed two books about Steven Universe, this being the original, Steven Universe: Art & Origins. A few of these design directions incorporated hand-drawn concept art to reference the "art of" contents while others utilized exclusively official production artwork for a clean look that leans into the magical, light-filled energy of the series.

You may be surprised to learn that the cover design process is often needed to begin before the interior of the book is complete, sometimes even before all art assets are available. The Art of Invader Zim was a unique project to work on in that the original series was long completed, and there was a new feature film in production, both with distinct art direction. Initial concepts were completed when there were only a selection of original series assets available, but ultimately a more elevated treatment was designed (after the DOOM DOOM DOOM sidetrack, which also was not favored). The final cover, (not shown here) was a collaboration with the feature film's art director, based on the last two directions I had been developing below.

The Art of/El Arte de El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera was an awesome design challenge throughout being that it is a bilingual book, with twice as much text to fit together with the artwork. These four cover concepts used artwork from the series that was high enough resolution to support a full bleed cover, and the standoff image was the springboard for what would become the final cover art (not shown here).

Per initial design brief, the LAIKA: The Magic Behind a Stop-Motion Dream Factory cover design began with an exploration of printing techniques and materials that included fabric over board with tip-in images, embossing, and foil stamping, until the process resolved itself as a full bleed image treatment where the art was the hero of the cover. I love that LAIKA logo, and played with its diagonal nature in some of these roughs.

The book Independently Animated: Bill Plympton is as unique as its subject, Bill. These early directions (first five images) were put together with some rough elements, but quickly the concept that really fit for the whole team was the illustration of Bill's head that he had already made. It just made sense. I hand lettered the BILL PLYMPTON for the cover, which was called very "Plympton-y" by Bill, a high compliment.