Warbound – French Edition

Here’s my cover art and design for the French edition of the third book in Larry Correia’s Grimnoir Chronicles.  Warbound follows on from Hard Magic and Spellbound; the original English language edition is out already but this French edition, entitled Foudre de Guerre, should be out in August from L’Atalante.

Below are my initial sketches trying out different poses for the main characters.

And here’s a couple more revised sketches following the publisher’s feedback after they chose the direction for the overall composition.  One suggestion they made was to make the tetsubo the samurai warrior is carrying look more threatening and powerful so I made it heftier and made the spikes bigger.

Some small tweaks were made to the final artwork, mainly on the samurai’s faceplate.  Originally it was thought that the faceplate looked too ghoulish and the publisher wanted him to be more heroic-looking in appearance.  Also it had to be tweaked so that it looked more obviously like a metal faceplate rather than the character’s own face.