The Bone Thief

Here’s some cover art I did a couple of years ago for a children’s book for Random House.  The Bone Thief by Alyson Noël is a fantasy novel with a feel that would appeal to fans of Tim Burton and Wes Anderson.

The artwork above is the final version that appears on the book but it differs from the original version I created…  Originally the image featured an archway made of bent junk metal that framed the kids.  Altough everyone loved the original version, when it got to the marketing department, the message came back that books with archways featured on the cover don’t seem to sell as well…  So the decision was made to adapt the artwork and remove the arch!  Here’s how it was to look originally.

I’ve no idea if removing the arch helped shift any extra copies of the book!  But I like both versions so it worked out ok in the end.

Here are some sketches for different concepts we played around with initially.

Here’s the final sketch I did once we agreed on what direction to go in with the artwork.

And here’s a sketch I did, once the decision was made to remove the arch, for how to adapt the image.

For the title I also played around with forming the words out of bent cutlery.