The second book in the Chronicles of Narnia, if you’re going with the publishing order, is Prince Caspian. This book cover was especially fun to design. I love the look of the night sky, the stars, and the clouds. The gradient tool in Illustrator is probably one of my favorites to work with.
Ultimately, my plan was to pick one of my favorite scenes from each book and design something based on that. My favorite scene from this book was when Cornelius takes Caspian to the highest tower to watch the two shooting stars, Tarva, the Lord of Victory, and Alambil, the Lady of Peace, pass overhead. This scene has always stuck with me because of the lore that C. S. Lewis briefly touches. In the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, it’s revealed that the stars can come down and take a human form. It makes me wonder what Tarva’s and Alambil’s stories are. Maybe one day I’ll write a story for them.
Anyway, the design was overall super fun to do. Not too complicated (I was on a harsh deadline), but just enough so that it showcased my skill set in Illustrator. The longest element to create was the tower. All those bricks. I was dreaming about them for days afterward.
To give more of a nighttime feel, I copied the tower’s shape and gave it a dark blue color, then lowered the opacity and set it to overtop, so that the grey color wasn’t so sharp. Then selecting a few characters from Pinterest, I traced over them with the pen tool (free handing a little there with Caspian’s character! I know, I was shocked myself ;)), and filled them in with black.
After a few more tweaks, the illustration part of the project was complete. Placing it into InDesign, writing in the title, synopsis, and everything else there, I called the design complete.
