Back Cover for Tetris Attack Music Album

I am currently working on images for a Tetris Attack album project. With the front cover finished (read about my process for it here), next was the back cover.

Inked back cover

Image for the back cover should be something that can be covered by track list. With Tetris Attack in mind, I thought of the game world (B1) or in-game background tiles (B2).

First round of thumbnails

Xaleph, the project director, chose B1. He suggested adding musical bars for the front cover, so I added musical bar to the back cover as well.

Pencil sketch

This image came together rather quickly. It is simple with few elements. It gave me second thoughts. Is this too simple? Am I being lazy?

Inked back cover?

Just to see if there was something better, I embarked on another idea: a group shot of all the pal characters in the game.

Pals thumbnail

Before drawing this thumbnail, I needed to get familiar with all 8 pal characters. I did so by copying their in-game portraits. That was when I discovered even more characters: Froggy has crab friends, Poochie (the dog) has the monkey, Rapahel (the raven) and Gargantua Blarg (the head with fangs) has shy guys, Lakitu (the turtle on cloud) has the birds...

I sketched symmetric composition and asymmetric composition. I liked the symmetric one better, so I used it for the above thumbnail. For drama, I added a giant Bowser scowling in the background.

Pals pencil

When I showed this to Xaleph, his reaction was basically "Holy shit! Two cakes back covers!" And so I drew the pencil sketch. This time, the image was not simple. Each character is simple, but I got to be disciplined to get the placement, size, and posing good enough. Once I was happy with the pencil, inking was faster.

Next post, I hope I have something to show for the painting process. See you then!