Super Post!

So, at the beginning of the summer, I decided it would be a worthwhile venture to try and read everything on my shelf of 'I Never Got Around to Reading This/I Started This But Never Finished' books. I was gonna start with The Lovely Bones, but about 60 pages in, all I could think about was how awkwardly horrible the Peter Jackson adaptation was and decided maybe it would be best to stop.

And then I saw it. My bound collection of Pullman's His Dark Materials series. I started reading The Golden Compass three years ago, but stopped halfway through because I was foolish enough to try and power through it during a super busy quarter. Oh, and also because the cover is SO GODDAMN UGLY.

Is this not the ugliest thing you've ever seen? Uhm, excuse me. I was referring to the book cover.

Anyway, I decided that if a cover is so frustratingly ugly that it prevents me from wanting to read the book, it might be in my best interest to redesign it. So once I finished the series, my first order of business was to sketch out each of the characters I wanted to feature in the cover. Unfortunately, life kinda got in the way of this project, so I only have three done.

First we have Iorek Byrnison, the rightful king of the Panserbjorne who pimp-smacks the jaws of his opponents clean off. I drew this while riding in a car (and my dad is not the smoothest driver), so some of it is a little rough. Namely his feet. Those damn feet.

Next up is Nameless/Gracious Wings, one of the many ugly-ass harpies who guard the underworld. I gave her this wicked liver-spot on the top her head, but when I drew in her hair, I had to cover it. It looked too awkward without hair on that part of her head. Not gonna lie, I cried a little. It was a really good liver-spot.

Lastly, we have Serafina Pekkala and Kaisa, witch queen (and all around fierce bitch) and her snow goose daemon. No, I did not intend for her to slightly resemble Alanis Morissette. And that's not ironic, so don't even think about making that joke.

I also found my color comp from when I tried to make a cover for this back in Power's Materials + Techniques class, and decided (since it sucked inordinate amounts of butt) I would give it a facelift (i.e. fix the color and put in loads of superfluous detail to try and cover up how awkwardly disproportionate the drawing is) to try and make it match with the new character designs I did.

This comp features Ms. Coulter, Lyra Belacqua, and their daemons The Golden Monkey and Pantalaimon, respectively. As you can see, the one on the left is just a hot mess. Maybe I was scared of blending colors three years ago? Lyra's prominently blushy cheeks makes her look like a Victorian Era prosti-tot, and apparently Ms. Coulter has a hickey. Anyway, this also features three of the limited amount of things I liked about the movie: Ms. Coulter's hairstyle, her claw-like fingernails, and her daemon's Reverend Al Sharpton-esque hairdo.

So there you have it. I still intend on doing more characters and eventually making the cover one day, but I guess right now my primary focus is getting employed so. . . this is on hold temporarily? We'll see.

Oh, and by the way, has the world gone mad?! Am I, Chad 'avoided-making-a-post-for-a-whole-year' Jacobs, really the one keeping this blog alive? Preposterous. Remedy this.