Before attempting any large scale drawings of the main portrait for your cover design it is important to sketch and practice on a smaller scale in order to build your confidence and understand the characteristics of the face you are going to illustrate.
When preparing his own version of a LWL cover for the Super Eight issue as part of a design competition, design student Paul Imrie first worked from freeze-frames of the film, pausing the movie at various points in the plot to get interesting expressions and then quickly sketching these in order to work on his portrait skills
TASK
- Watch the two Ender's Game trailers and freeze-frame at points where you can isolate an interesting expression on the face of your chosen focus character. Screen-grab the frames (CMD+Shift+4) and either using the graphics tablet or on paper sketch each face as best you can, trying to work on those features that most clearly define the subject's likeness. If you hand-draw your images, make sure you scan and adjust your drawings in Photoshop.
- Combine these initial draft sketches into a single document and annotate each image, saying what works and what doesn't and which aspects need improving in terms of working on your main portrait illustration.