Gotta keep 'em on-model!

This cover was perhaps one of the biggest revisions I ever did. And it was all my own darn fault! See, when I drew this one, I didn't have all the details of Mack's trailer figured out quite right. The first version I did, which is actually the second picture I posted here, doesn't have the trim or the air conditioning units or the other structures on there like they should be. I just drew a box with the big Lightning Mcqueen decal on the side. Paul Morrissey, the editor of the Pixar books at Boom at the time, caught this one and told me that we need to get the trailer right because he was pretty certain that Disney would ask for us to fix it anyway. It wasn't really a very easy fix, either. I had to draw the missing stuff, composite it into the original line art, import the line art to the color file and then tweak the color layers to match up with the new structures and contours. I think it came out pretty good, tho, I don't think you'd ever know that I had to fix it up as extensively as I did. And, I gotta say, figuring out how to do edits like this came in VERY handy when I started to do art corrections to interior pages later on down the road. So, no problemmo, really. Time well spent.

Actually, this cover is an early favorite of mine. I think I was really starting to hit my stride with this. It's a very friendly, positive portrait of Lightning McQueen and his pal, Mack. The story, "The Rookie," written by Alan Porter, is about how Lightning McQueen met Mack and about how they helped each other accomplish their mutual goals, McQueen to be a big-league race car, and Mack tobecome a mig league hauler. This is the basis of their friendship, and I imagine that together, going across country, living the dream, they would have had some pretty good times together. That's what I wanted to show with this image, that they are pretty solid friends. And I think it's a very pretty images as well. I was getting the hang of my painterly style and process and finding that my skills were getting more reliable. Look at those clouds! Look at that backgorund! just beautiful, I say. This cover make me very proud.

Hope you like it too! It's Friday, so check back again on Monday and I'll show you some more nifty stuff!