Book Cover
The book cover's illustration is inspired by Caspar David Friedrich's 'Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog' painting. It depicts the protagonists, Krim (left) and Yeh (right) before dipping into the White Abyss the series takes its name from.
The logo envelopes the top half of the cover and is larger than the page itself (being cropped.) Foreboding, like the adventure to come.
Logo
The logo for Warlock draws from type used in both fantasy and western cinema, books and games. Composition is similar to the off center posters for western film posters while the typeface (Imbue) echoes the thin characters and thick serifs of Final Fantasy's logo.
Top Left: Square format
Top Right: Comic Cover (Primary variant)
Bottom: Book spines, horizontal and vertical formats
Protagonist Sketches
Color Studies
The snowy landscape of the eponymous White Abyss drove the idea for a limited color palette. Early experiments were with earth tones and lead to a jaundiced look that was not pretty nor readable visually.
Eventually what wound up being the simplest solution (for the sake of readability and narrative necessity) was to have single color backgrounds and have the characters be solid white. This could also be done in reverse.
Another method was to use both contrast and complimentary colors to further separate characters from their backgrounds.
Details such as Krim's staff and iris would be red to further identify characters.
Examples of Test Print
Examples of Comic Pages
Character Silhouette Study
Given the amount of lineart and details pages can contain, scenes can easily begin to blur. A fundamental part of character design is readability. One way to ensure this is to do silhouette studies. When all surface detail is removed, characters need to be easily identifiable. The shapes the characters are made of can contribute to this. Krim (left) is a triangular shape, Yeh (center) is a walking cube while Gobblin (right) is a bottom heavy half circle.
Logo Sketches
Before approaching typefaces and all that entails I began focusing on purely composition and scale. Without extensive sketching prior to my work in Illustrator, I wouldn't have discovered the possibilities of rhythm.
Type Info (Logo)
Typeface: Imbue
Tools Used
Adobe inDesign
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop