Rocket Bride

Cover for an example book cover design process for Reedsy, part of a long article on How to Design a Book Cover. Through a guide full of advice, the reader is offered a sample of a 'real' project explained step by step, starting with an initial prompt that was later transformed into a whole premise:

“On the eve of her wedding to the wealthiest man in her star system, young Princess Andromeda discovers that her husband-to-be has plans to deport the citizens of Aethiopius IV and turn the planet into a luxury resort destination. To save her people from a new age of misery, she first needs to find an escape... and an opportunity appears in the unlikely form of a space pirate who crash-lands at her wedding.

On the run from the authorities, Andromeda and the roguish Captain Perseus must now put their differences aside if he is to escape justice for his crimes — and she is to save her planet. Forced to rely on each other, will these galactically mismatched accomplices discover something else among the stars...?”

These were the original concepts presented for the cover:

Selected concept vs the final pencil sketch. For this, I was inspired by Han Solo from Star Wars, Captain Harlock and Flash Gordon:

Some corrections were needed and the sketch was improved adding some details to the protagonists that better fit their original descriptions:

Colour palette explorations (very pulpy and retrofuturistic). We ended up going with a slightly modified version of palette C:

And if you are a book cover designer and want to offer your services through Reedsy's marketplace, join the freelancers community here!