The Evolution of Chase Benjamin Cooper, Superhero

I think it was the Fourth of July weekend. I was sitting on the patio chatting with my mother, explaining to her how exciting it was to have learned a new program (inDesign) and to actually use it on my text. I told her that the next step was learning Photoshop, but that I had already tried once and found it much more complex to learn. I wasn't sure I had the time to learn it well enough to do a good job on my cover.

This was my inspiration:

Awesome, right?

I had a mock up cover to share.

Yeah, less awesome.
The "figure" was taken from a photo of G at Teddy R on our trip to Glacier.

I was more concerned about getting the "figure" right than designing it well.
Rene encouraged me to hire out.

So I did.

I used a few different online artist and designer databases (e.g. theispot.com) and wound up hiring Ryan Schiefe from Minneapolis as my cover designer. He, in turn, encouraged me to hire an illustrator to do the figure. I asked for bids from three artists and selected Sean Tiffany. I was impressed with his work in Sports Illustrated for Kids and his online presence, which seemed friendly.

But it was his initial sketch of what Chase could look like won me over.

Adorable.
Alas, the first "real" sketch went a different direction.