Emil and the Detectives: Refining Thumbnails

Sketchbook work

I decided to go back to basics with my thinking process with the story, as I had become too wrapped up in the cliche ideas that I thought would be successful.

I started by drawing maps of Berlin and looking closer into the value of the lines, as well as studying 1920's German buildings to get a sense of surrounding. This lead to studying the Berlin tube map, but I feel like I didn't get very far with this concept, so I left it be for a while. 
Changing direction, I began sketching out the most significant symbols and images from the story within 1920's photo frames, for example a photograph of Emil, his train ticket etc.

Eureka moment!

It suddenly came to me that if I applied the line work I had studied earlier with the photographs of key images, I could create something along the lines of a police evidence board with string and notes pinned to a board to try and solve the crime, which goes perfectly with the theme of the story!

I developed a few rough thumbnail sketches, which I plan to enhance digitally; because there are so many different potential elements to this cover this may take a while in terms of arrangement and layout etc.

Plan of Action

Now I just need to get cracking on vectorising my thumbnail sketches and developing them into a final book cover (scary but exciting!). I  am also pretty stuck for a colour scheme; I struggle with colour schemes anyway but this is particularly difficult as it is such an old book being market to a generation sixty years down the line. Nevertheless I am determined to create a striking cover for Emil and the Detectives, so experimentation and determination will hopefully pay off.