The Fury #1 - Making of a Cover by Francesco Francavilla
This week marks the release of Hellboy: The Fury, the craziest take no prisoners story arc of the Hellboy series yet written. We asked Francesco Francavilla to talk about his cover for Hellboy: The Fury #1. Enjoy his thoughts on his process below.
Before we start, please let me say how honored I was to be invited by Mike to do this set of four covers for his books. I have been a fan of his for a long time and, luckily, have become a friend in the past two years, so I was floored when he offered me this opportunity. Thank you, Mike.
As you all know by now, I provided the artwork for the variant covers of four different number-one issues of several Mignolaverse miniseries that will be out in the next few months.
This “quartet” of covers is symbolized by the icon that you will see on the top left of the cover, an icon I can’t really reveal too much about right now because it hints at the fourth mini, which hasn’t been announced yet. What I can tell you is that this icon actually started life as artwork I did for the back cover of all four books and later decided to also incorporate on the front covers.
The first cover I was asked to tackle was the one for the Hellboy: The Fury miniseries. Mike was a fan of my vintage and pulp illustrations and posters, so he wanted something done in that vein.
These are the very first two sketches I did for the cover.
Mike and editors Scott and Daniel liked elements from both sketches (the winged king, crouching HB wielding a weapon), so I went back to the drawing board and produced the following sketch, this time playing also with the color palette to give an idea of the final look and feel of the art.
Once the sketch was approved, I proceeded to the final art.
Sometimes—when I am having too much fun (like in this case)—I always like to do more, so as to give a choice. I provided a more detailed rendition of the initial concept as an alternate . . .
. . . and a version that was more faithful to the original concept.
Everyone at Dark Horse voted for the faithful version (it felt closer to that vintage look Mike was looking for), so there you have it—the variant cover for Hellboy: The Fury #1, out in stores this week.
Hope you guys enjoyed an inside look at my process.
Cheers,
Francesco
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