Experimental Mock Book Cover

"Transpecies" is the story of a wolf named Lauren who joins forces with two foxes to embark on the search for a sanctuary for cognitively enhanced animals.  The antecedent of the central character is a present-day person named Lauren whose wish to become her fursona (also known as kintype, therioside) is granted, along with serious unexpected additional consequences.  The most recent version of the first act of the story is available to interested readers upon request. 

The 25,000 word document is about a third of the length of a novel.  In exchange for reader feedback/critique within six weeks of receiving the document, I'm making this manuscript available to one and all.  As you might expect, I ask that this digital text not be re-distributed as it is currently an imperfect draft.  I'd be happy to hear from potential readers via deviantART note.  I'll need a prospective reader's email address to send out the document.  This work belongs to the young adult (YA) fiction genre, and additional details are available in my November 5 journal.  Let me know if you'd like to join the protagonist on her journey as a reader of the story! 

I think it's important for me as an artist and writer to continually improve my skills by taking up challenging projects of the kind that I have not previously attempted.  The design for this cover was created primarily in Adobe Illustrator Creative Cloud, which uses the vector (curves, gradients, fills) standard rather than bitmap (rows and columns of pixels) representation.  I have far more experience with Photoshop, but I am now a capable beginner at using Illustrator.  I made a rough drawing of Byron's pose in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro on my Samsung Galaxy Note 4 with the S Pen before importing that bitmap sketch into Illustrator, where I traced his outline over and over again with the pencil tool.  Fortunately, the pencil tool in Illustrator uses auto smoothing and correcting when making repeated similar strokes in a given place.  After cleaning up the stroke with fine movements of the pencil tool, I used the Live Paint tool to effectively set up a coloring book fill pattern for Byron.  Next, I used the knife tool to slice out different areas where one color fill bordered a different color fill.  Once I gained experience from Byron's drawing, I was able to develop the vector strokes and fill sections for Lauren and Silvia entirely in Illustrator. 

I developed a line of rolling hills in the background to make a horizon edge that evokes the double helix of DNA in which the major groove is clearly larger than the minor groove.  This can be seen in the case of the railroad that disappears into the horizon by going through the bigger gap (major groove) of the horizon border.  I used a stroke pattern that came with Illustrator CC to develop the paw prints, which should actually show four and not three canid toes.  The tall structures on the hill are a distant urban settlement, while two separate buildings represent a suburban buffer zone.  The trees were created with rough, fast strokes.  Notice that the sunrise appears from the eastern edge of the sky, such that the characters face north as they continue their journey.  I exported the cover design from Illustrator as PNG and then scaled it to appear on a premade design pattern.  Specifically, the "Hardcover Book MockUp" is a template by Raul Taciu available in the Adobe Creative Cloud Market.  Left: Byron, cross fox, male / Middle: Lauren, gray wolf, female / Right: Silvia, red fox, female.

Comments and critique for this cover design are also appreciated.