On Guard!

Usually when I do a book cover for the Jake Maddox books I'll do a figure and then drop in a suitable background and turn the whole thing in as one finished piece. But, for the basketball books, I was asked to do something different.

This time I was asked to only provide the figure so the designers on the book could play with the images more and try something new. I've seen a few different variations of the covers so even I'm not sure what the finished ones will look like yet.

But, here is how the figure for the first cover I did turned out.

Again, the colors will be changed on the finished covers from my original orange, black, and white uniform color scheme to blues and whites. But, I figured it would be fun to show you what I had originally thought of and how I pictured the guys on the team.

I really liked the way this figure turned out. I love the movement of his body and the foreshortening on his arms. I really get a sense that he is driving towards the net and going for a shot.

So, as the title suggests, the opposing team better be "On Guard!" (wa wa wa....ha ha!)