Hobbit Cover Exploration
by Andrew Kolb @kolbisneat
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This personal project was driven by the goal to do more book covers with clients. I find the sort of work I share online is the sort of projects I get. If I post a map, I'll inevitably get clients emailing me about maps. Then when I share those projects I get more maps and the cycle continues. Sometimes I need a change of pace so I use these personal projects to break routine.
I love THE HOBBIT. It was one of my favourite books as a kid and I often go back to it when I'm looking for inspiration. With this project I wanted to show a few different treatments for the same story to highlight some of the book's variety, as well as my own visual variety.
I started off with the above sketches. Some, like the zigzag dragon, were very loose. Others, like Bilbo hiding from Gollum, required a bit more detail.
I wanted the first cover to be only two colours so I went with black and white. The colour study was quick as I just wanted to make sure the silhouette of the characters were working. Then it was on to final artwork but something wasn't feeling finished about it. Maybe it's because it was black and white, but it still felt like a rough sketch to me.
That's when I introduced the frame. It's such a simple addition but it really made the design feel like a complete illustration.
For the second cover, I knew I wanted to feature Gollum and an invisible Bilbo. I also knew I wanted to do a limited colour palette (more than the first cover, but not full colour like the third cover). The below explorations show the iterations I went through. I knew the cave was going to be cool colours and then I used a warm colour to make Gollum stand out.
The problem was that Bilbo was getting lost in the design. I mean that's the point of a ring that makes you invisible, but it's not what I wanted for the cover. That's when I decided to shift the focus and make both the background and Gollum the same colour. With both in shades of green, it made Bilbo's white lines more prominent and visually tied together with the white text in the title. With that sorted, it was time to move on to final artwork!
So the first cover was black & white, the second cover was limited colour, for the third and final cover I wanted to do full colour. But first, the sketch.
This third design was meant to be light, cheerful, and the most oriented towards early readers. Lots of flowers and little creatures but they all hint at the bigger story. I included a spider and an eagle's feather and a lizard (to represent the dragon) and three rocks to represent the trolls that turn to stone. With the above sketch done, I then proceeded to the colour study.
In the colour studies I started off with a slightly psychedelic, 70s-inspired palette, but it didn't feel right for the story. I didn't change much, but the cooler green and yellow type really shifted the tone.
I also added another easter egg into the illustration. Each of the small flowers represents the 13 dwarves and the colour fo the flowers represents the colours of their cloaks!
And above is the finished cover! In the final artwork I included one more easter egg, a tiny little frog hiding in the shadows with a ring shaped spot on the mushroom above.
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