Scram-Pire - The Reluctant Kid-Vampire

Meet Bud.

Earlier this year I was very pleased to receive an email from author Julia Dweck, asking me if I'd like to collaborate on a new eBook she was writing. Julia is an established and prolific writer of kids books and so it was a real thrill to hear from her and her publisher Kite Readers.

It turns out Julia had seen an earlier post of mine which I'd sub headed "Scram-Pire". Here's the original sketch from that post. It was a particularly hot day back in January here in Oz, so I imagined it would have been doubly terrifying for Vampires.

This simple sketch was enough to get Julia's creative brain clicking and whirring, and she came up with a new concept about a Vampire kid shunning the vampire life. So rather than running from the sun, Bud ends up running from the expectations of Vampire life.

Concept Art and Sketches:

An early idea for Bud

Here is the coloured up version on the initial sketch that I sent to Julia. I also threw in a couple of facial expressions to give her a sense of how Bud would look through the story.

Vlad. The Draco to Bud's Harry

Page Progression:

Rough: First of all I deliver all the pages to Julia in Storyboard form. I do this very quickly and roughly in Flash, using the brush tool.

Pencil Rough: I bring the Flash sketch into Photoshop and begin to produce a more detailed rough

Rough colours: This image show the colour progression from left to right. I use very rough colours to give a plan out my tones plus light and shade, before rendering in the final version (see steps)

Final Version: After lots of layering and tweaking, the final image emerges. 

Cover ideas:

Early cover idea which we scrapped as it looked a bit too grim.

Rough redesign, harking back to my initial sketch that sparked this project

Coloured Rough

FINAL!!

Well that's just a little background into the making of Scram-Pire! I've been a bit slack with this blog lately so I hope this makes up for it.

Bud is available for kindle here for $2.99. If you're kind enough to support us, please leave a positive review and help our rankings.

Thanks for reading :)