Star Crusher Cover

Now that Missile Mouse: The Star Crusher is listed on Amazon I thought I'd share the cover process. I had a lot of fun with this cover. Despite the old maxim to never judge a book by it's cover the public at large sets this tidbit of wisdom aside and will usually only pick up what looks cool. With that in mind a lot of folks at my publisher have to approve this cover and make sure it's going to enhance sales instead of hinder them. Despite that there was very little back and forth between us making designing this cover a breeze.

I began with sending them some sketches of possible cover ideas. These were pulled from various scenes in the book.



Scholastic liked the one with the alien bursting through the ground and asked me to develop that further. I drew up three more designs and sent them over.

After seeing those they decided to just stick with the original idea and I went ahead and inked it. I inked the background separate from Missile Mouse so my art director Phil Falco would have more freedom in designing and placing the title.

With inks finished and approved I colored it. Below is the color I sent to them. They liked it but felt it was a little too dark for a kids book. A couple color adjustments were made and if you want to see the final for print click over to the link on amazon here.

RIP Fighter

The Rogue Imperium of Planets (RIP) in partnership with Cephalodian Defense Systems (CDS) developed this space fighter for escort missions. It's light and agile with a respectable armament of two 50mm blaster canons. In the Star Crusher, Missile Mouse faces off against two of these with nothing but a grappling hook, some rope, an interplanetary ballistic missile, and his wits.



Because of the complex shape and my looming deadline I got a friend of mine from Blue Sky to model this craft for me based on my sketch and ortho drawings. He then positioned the model according to my roughs and gave me screen grabs which I in turn drew over. Thanks again for your help Dave!

And here it is in action!