Bad Space Comic Cover
The aim for this shorter brief is to generate a front cover design for the short comic spread 'The Suit' by Bad Space comics.
The aim for this shorter brief is to generate a front cover design for the short comic spread 'The Suit' by Bad Space comics.
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I read the comic and made not of the key themes and visuals that feature in it, the idea of a space suit that consumes its wearer using nanobots.
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To start with I looked into existing comic covers just to get a feel for how they're put together, what elements are included and the rough orientation.
Generally a cover with display a main image along with the title, authors name as well as the publishers. In addition to this usually the volume/ issue number is on the cover along with a bar code. So this gave me a rough check list to go off of.
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Interesting to see how covers have changed over the years, a shift into being more illustrative and less type based.
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Something else I wanted to keep in mind was how comic and manga covers differ in their approach to hook readers. Manga tends to be orientated more creatively and I feel incorporated the type in a more visually pleasing manner, comics can rely on the title/ character to attract readers where as most manga don't have that name recognition so they have to use imagery more creatively.
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So with a rough idea for the requirements I had to meet I moved onto thumbnails to generate some ideas.
Began to throw colour into some designs to flesh them out a little bit more.
I went through my visuals and selected those which I felt had some potential, making some adjustments to develop them further potentially into more finished looking concepts.
Concept 1
Depicting a head split into segments I like the surreal visual of it, decided to go with a psychedelic colour pallet for contrast. |
Concept 2
A broken suit fragmenting into pieces similar in style to the visuals of the comic, overall more simplistic and subtle. |
Concept 3
An open suit with the human remains inside, decided to be more expressive with the linework. |
Concept 4
A more basic idea of an astronaut., tried to make the black areas more dynamic by giving it some direction. |
Concept 5
Another surreal idea, hands making up a face within the astronaut helmet. Again keeping it simple with black and white. |
Concept 6
A space suit laid out on the ground, leaves it up to the viewer to determine what has happened to the occupant. |
Before I got too invested in the illustration I decided to make note of some existing comic book covers to see how they were laid out, recording the placement of the title, author, barcode and any additional information that might be useful.
Recorded the difference between comic and manga covers, generally manga tends to be laid out in a more free flowing manner whereas comics are more rigid and stick to a set format.
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I began mocking up some potential type orientations for my cover designs, the black areas would be where the type would be placed. At this stage I'm just trying to figure out placement rather than the specific type face itself.
Design 1
Design 2
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This was the first concept I decided to play around with, a skull design within a spacesuit. Experimented with the orientation to see if portrait or landscape worked best, personally I preferred portrait mainly as it filled more of the space and I liked how it bled across the barcode area.
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This was one of the concepts I decided to develop, a figure breaking down and disintegrating, the main issue I was having was that this cover would be black and white so I'm not sure if it would work as an eye catching cover image.