My new book Gastronauts is out now in bookstores and online.
Today I’m taking you behind the scenes to show you how I designed the robots and vehicles in the story.
Quick recap: Sally Tinker is the world’s foremost inventor under the age of twelve. In Gastronauts, Sally’s baby brother Joe swallows her latest invention. So Sally and her friend Charli shrink themselves down in a tiny submarine and journey into Joe’s body.
Here’s how I designed the cover.
Step 1: really bad first sketches
Sometimes you get the cover idea pretty quickly and clearly from the start.
This was not one of those times.
I struggled with this a lot at first; I couldn’t figure out how to show the reader that Sally and Charli were inside a sub, inside Joe, and make Sally and Charli big enough so that they were recognisable, without being too big that the scale stopped being anatomically correct.
None of these ideas really work, but I’ve included them here to show you how a cover design process can go. There are usually lots of rejected, fairly ordinary ideas.

Continue reading “Behind the scenes of Gastronauts, part 3: cover design”