Alternate Soccer Cover

It was a really busy weekend and I spent most of it chained to the drawing table getting multiple projects a little further along on their journey to completion.

But, I didn't want to neglect the blog for too long so here is one of the alternate illustrations I did for the Jake Maddox covers I showed you last week. The kid playing soccer was my first attempt at the the cover before I was told to change it entirely and then to change it again until I finally got to the final piece. I didn't need to ink any of this character but I was messing around one night and I liked him so I laid some ink over him. I guess I didn't like his arms or legs too much because I stopped with inking a head and a torso.

Oh, and the headless basketball figure next to him? The one that was actually used for the cover? Well, when I did my initial illustrations for the covers I was working from provided photo reference and all the characters had their heads looking to the left or right. After I penciled them I was told that they wanted all the characters looking at the viewer. So, instead of erasing a perfectly good head and working over an erased and marred piece of illustration board I simply drew a new head separate from the body and digitally attached it once everything was scanned into the computer. It looks a little creepy here but it all turned out well in the end.

OK, back to work for me. But I thought it would be cool to show off some of the work that didn't quite make the cut.

Have a great day!