Different character designs for the cover

[Storm Kesocascay]

I'm planning for the cover of "The Night and Day" to include most of the characters so I went looking for photos and sketches of matching characters and compiled them together in an album. This album is growing pretty fast.

I had to put them all on my Facebook page to save a little time. You can look at the album by clicking here.

Please feel free to give any feedback.

I'm also needing designs for the characters Aryas and Arylos. No matter where I went and how long I searched, I could only find 2 designs for Aryas and not even one for Arylos. Mind helping me out here. Their main feature is that Aryas has long blonde hair with ocean blue eyes and Arylos has long blood-red hair with blood-red eyes and are both males. (Now you see my problem?) Any suggestions or ideas?

 

[Nihal]

I think I'm failing to grasp your problem. Who is going to be in charge of bringing these characters to life–through illustration or photos? Because you can give directions, but usually, if it's an illustrator, he/she can create the design. Did you try to contact this person to ask about this?

P.s.: Small worthy correction: Those are references, not designs–mainly because they're mostly photos from real people. Sketches, etc, are designs and they're not from your characters unless you have the creator's permission or commissioned them. Be careful to not infringe any copyright here. ;3

 

[Storm Kesocascay]

I think I'm failing to grasp your problem. Who is going to be in charge of bringing these characters to life—through illustration or photos? Because you can give directions, but usually, if it's an illustrator, he/she can create the design. Did you try to contact this person to ask about this?

P.s.: Small worthy correction: Those are references, not designs—mainly because they're mostly photos from real people. Sketches, etc, are designs and they're not from your characters unless you have the creator's permission or commissioned them. Be careful to not infringe any copyright here. ;3

I've looked for a few people who are willing, yet not many can really understand how exactly these characters are to appear. Most illustrators I've found can't give them (Arylos mainly) the appearance that matches both their character description and teir personality type. For example; Arylos is a young man with blood-red hair with blood-red eyes. Most artists get that concept. His personality is very egotistic, self-reliant (I hate using that word, but it matches because Arylos doesn't want other people to salve problems that he started) and has a strong punk attitude, but chooses to remain sort of normal. Most drawings back reminds me of Grell Sutcliff from Black Butler (and Arylos is nowhere near flamboyant enough).

The company I work with affiliates with the company I used the images from. I have bought what can be summarized as a "temporary right". Basically, as long as I show where the images came from, I can use the images as rough drafts. That's why I call them "sketches" because the final images will be based off of these images with minor adjustments. (An example which I will not do is make Jacuan's hair shorter or make Aryas's eyes more blue.) If the images here are perfect the way they are, I can buy the image. That's why I love ThinkStock. The cover of "Gods of War" is actually a ThinkStock photo.