Hi everyone, another update for you! Edits are now here for the fake TV guide and the portrait art for Max is also here. That was one of the stretch goals I was most excited about. But with these now ready to go, we can start locking down orders.
Once that's done, those digital rewards can finally fly free and I'll start getting print rewards together for those who opted for physical versions. There are still time to get these as an add on, but not for long.
In other news, I'm also editing the third draft of The Chosen One Con and having a blast doing so! My goal is to get these edits done by the end of Feb for beta readers in March and then further edits in April. It's a tight schedule, but with a little magic, we'll make it work.
(This means no video games for me, boo)
However, now for the exciting part... the portrait!
I love showing off art, and I thought it would be fun to go through the process of the portrait as I did with the city map. This portrait was designed by the wonderful Aowna, who also did the art for the character cards. I loved the way Aowna portrays these characters, and of Max, so I couldn't resist a chance to work with them again.
My idea for the portrait was an image of Max hunched over a potion bottle while being haunted by TV screens. It's what I wanted the initial book cover to look like, but I was talked out of it lol but! I got to recreate it as a portrait that will appear as a black and white version in the physical book.
Naturally, it all began with a terrible MS Paint version:
Aowna then set me a couple of sketches of what the layout and pose could look like, and I settled on this one:
I already fell in love with the initial sketches! The colour and lighting were perfect!
Then Aowna sent some more updates slowly filling in the detail:
And if we skip ahead, this is the final version:
I absolutely love the details of this piece! It shows a haunted Max hunched over his potion bottle, which has a tiny bluebell motif on it that's relevant to the book. The screens that surround him also feature the same face repeated in various different emotions, and this represents a certain character you'll also meet in the book...
If you love this portrait as much as I do, then it's available as a printed addon. I'm hoping book two can feature a similar piece of Lyle, our second MC!
