SquirrelShaver on DeviantArthttps://www.deviantart.com/squirrelshaver/art/Home-Coming-266831095SquirrelShaver

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Home Coming

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This is a cover I just finished drawing for Grimm Fairy Tales #66.

I find that every cover I do has a story behind it and I kind of like the story behind this one and thought I'd share:

Last year I pitched an idea for an exclusive cover for "Tales From Wonderland" to debut at Phoenix Comic-Con 2010 that portrayed Alice (in Wonderland) sitting on the hot deserted road somewhere in the Arizona desert kind of hitching for a ride. I was told that it didn't sound interesting enough and we were supposed to be doing football theme covers for shows, but I was asked to at least draw up a layout sketch and pitch it so I did. The cover ended up being the second best selling book at the convention and ultimately one of the best selling and most requested covers of my career which was amazing to me.

So this year when Zenescope based all their show exclusive variant covers on that one image and went with a hitchhiker/road trip theme I couldn't believe it! We've done a bunch of them this year, including the SDCC nude covers, based on that concept and this will be the last book in the hitchhiker theme. I was pitched the idea of drawing a hot girl looking all sexy waiting for a train which is a good idea that you can't go wrong with, and I was totally aiming in that direction until I thought of this. I felt it was only appropriate to give homage to the original Phoenix cover that inspired this years successful run of exclusives and pitched a layout of a girl looking really bored or sad sitting on her suitcases in an empty train station. Both covers are very similar if you compare them: lonely environment, anxious expressions, etc. which I thought was fun but they stand on their own which was important to me. On the suitcases you might notice there's tags of some of the conventions we hit this year where we released these some of the road trip/hitchhiker covers. Again, being the end of the con-season I thought it might be fun to have Sela tired and saddened that the fun is over for a few months, waiting for a train back home.

Granted this one is less up-front-sexy and more on the "cute" side but I'm really happy with how the girl came out. I do wish the background was a little more involved but it was a learning experience as always!

Original "Phoenix or Bust" Phoenix Comic-Con cover: [link]

Pencils: Me (Mike DeBalfo)

- My :facebook: page: [link]
- Website: www.mikedebalfo.com [link]
Image size
592x900px 466.73 KB
© 2011 - 2024 SquirrelShaver
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