Bury the Lead: Making the Cover

The Sarcastic Voyage podcast crew contacted me about possibly doing a cover for an offshoot project. They were making a long-form radio drama/comedy in the style of the pulp noir shows of the 1940s. Would I want to do it?

Did they know I spend every workday listening to Anticoh 1710? That I schedule my lunch breaks around the daily format of frontier shows/theatre/cop shows/detective shows/suspense/danger abroad/scifi/masked heroes? Could they have known?

I jumped at the chance.

I got a few descriptions to start and worked those up in a sketch at lunchtime. 

I tightened that up a scoash.

Then I worked up a final pencil sketch.

This is actually the almost final sketch as I was asked to cover her knees. That done, I scanned it and started building it in Illustrator.

I compiled a lot of reference based on suggestions from the podcasters. I brought Sherilyn Fenn from Twin Peaks into it, adding her eyebrows to the main face model from His Girl Friday. I used an online pulp cover collection for color reference. All the images helped get the clothes right too.

This is the cover as we approach the finished version. I built the piece beyond the borders of the image. Notice the floating hand on the right. That's all I needed for that guy. No reason to draw the entire arm.

And here's the end product with cover text.