I Fixed It (EDIT, final version)

EDIT: I did a more cleaned up version. Once again I demonstrate that background dragons can still have plenty of details on them.


So the Wings of Fire Graphic Novel cover was revealed yesterday and long story short I don't like the art style at all. So I redrew it because it's not that hard to take that cover concept and actually make it look good.
It looks like the artist didn't even try to match the official designs for the dragons, the anatomy is very rough and unpolished, and the inking/coloring style is also very grungy looking and not at all appealing to me. Here's what it looks like www.comicsbeat.com/exclusive-t…

There have been a lot of people trying to defend the cover by saying the following:

1) This is a comic book so they have to draw the dragons hundreds of times, they need to be simplified!
- I am an animator. I know all about drawing the same image hundreds of times. And let me assure you, you can simplify things WITHOUT making them look crappy. Even in this pen sketch I did in about 20 minutes, I simplified the scale design on Clay. It does not perfectly match the official art, and yet it is RECOGNIZABLE as a Mudwing.

2) The background dragons look bad because they are in the background so they don't need much detail!
-This is a weak point to make, and I demonstrate why in my version. My background dragons are tiny and simplified and very rough and yet still manage to be recognizable as their respective species. The only reason I can tell what dragon is what on the official cover is because of the colors. If it was in black and white, the dragons would all pretty much look indistinguishable from each other. This is bad character design on the artist's part.

3) Well it's hard to draw dragons maybe it was their first time drawing them!
-If this is the case, /why did they take a job involving drawing dragons for an entire comic/.


That is all. I wanted to upload my sketch while the 'hype' for this graphic novel was hot. I am salty about this mostly because I've seen the other work this artist can do and it is GORGEOUS. Why did he not apply his talent to this book????