I approached Ignacio to work on his cover illustration, but he said that he already had someone working on it. I did offer to work on his environment illustrations if he gave me more references of the style he was looking for. I knew that I was not competent enough with anatomy to fulfill hiss character design needs. However after he asked to see a selection of my work he instead suggested working on a cover design and if liked the other one more then he would use mine as an internal illustration.

I started by reading through his development presentation and making note of the style that he wanted the characters in. Out of the work that I sent him he enjoyed this style, so I made sure to consider how I could add inking to my sketches.

Once I had an idea of what he wanted I made some quick thumbnails and sent them over for approval. He noted the thumbnails that he preferred (noted as: minotaur bold, jaguar hunting and jaguar + sword) and gave the go ahead for starting some more developed concepts.

In order to prepare for the more developed concept I worked on some Jaguar studies because it was present in two of the approved concepts and I have little to no experience drawing anthropomorphized characters so I knew I needed practice. I created a pinterest board for the project and began working from that.

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/emrys616/project-chronos/

Because of my multiple deadlines and the way I tend to work due to ADHD I sent the first developed sketch and was given this feedback:

• too big
• add blood splatter
• add hands to show the POV character (maybe falling)
• do not include typography

I was given this image as a guideline. I should note, I stuck to this format for the majority of my thumbnails, but assumed because the thumbnail with an alternate layout was approved that it was okay to proceed on the concept.

I am however glad for Ignacio realising that the format he had originally given was a bit limiting and changing it to something with more space.

Following Ignacio’s requests I developed these thumbnails, trying to retain as much dynamic movement despite the reduced working area. Ignacio chose the top right to move forward into a developed sketch.