Dead City: Dark Days Cover

The Dead City books by James Ponti, published by Simon and Schuster's Aladdin imprint, have been amazing to work on. Here's the cover for the final book in the series, Dead City: Dark Days. My first cover for this series was way back in 2011 and it was my first series for a major publisher, so it's a little bitter sweet to be wrapping up.

The story revolves around Molly, the teen girl protagonist who gets wrapped up in the Omegas, a team of Zombie fighters battling the hordes of Undead that live in an under Manhattan. The books are high action and bring the Zombie genre to a young reader audience in a really fun and smart way while weaving in New York City history and culture. Working with so much great material was an absolute blast. Wrapping up the series with the big finale on top of the iconic Chrysler building was a fantastic way to cap it off!

Thanks to everyone at Aladdin for being so great to work with!

Some New Covers

Haven't had a chance to update this thing in a while... between personal work and freelance somethings gotta give.

Here are two sequel covers for the series I've been doing for Simon and Schuster's Alladin imprint, Dead City and Hollow Earth.

These were really great projects, coming back to something I'd done previously and being able to build on what I'd established for the look already but being able to make the images of their own as well. As usual the publisher was awesome to work with and I had a lot of freedom to run with ideas on these.

Dead City: Blue Moon

Hollow Earth: The Bone Quill

Dead City Cover

Last year, Simon & Schuster asked me if I was available to do a cover for this really fun middle grade novel called Dead City by James Ponti. As I read through the email and saw "Zombies" and "New York City" I got really excited and I jumped at the chance to work with them.
The designer suggested a couple of concepts to start with and I sketched up a few really quick thumbnails...

They really liked dark alley idea with the zombie hand coming up through the manhole, which was one of my favorites too. The book has an element of humour to it and I thought it was kind of a witty way to integrate the zombie and New York themes nicely. I also really liked how the low angle makes the main character, a 13 year old girl by the name of Molly, look more powerful than her size would otherwise suggest. From here I got some direction on a lighting style and colour palette and set to work on the final.

This was a super fun project to work on and I really like how the piece ended up. It was a great experience working with Lisa Vega at Simon & Schuster and I love what she did with the cover design. The book is scheduled for an October 2012 release and I can't wait to see it in print.