This is a book cover project I made in order to create an Omni-comprehensive product: I designed the layout, I have drawn the illustrations using different styles, and even using a different kind of 3D model I made or found on my personal archive, I used Photoshop for the photomanipulation process and for the drawing one; Illustrator for the flat illustration design; in the end I used Rhinoceros + KeyShot + Photoshop achieving the effect I wanted.
Felidae: This book tells the story of a cat, Francis, who investigates on a series of mysterious homicides occurred in his neighbourhood. The first victim was "Deepblue", a stray cat. So I choose this palette in order to communicate the idea of blood, murder, and crime fiction. I have drawn those white stray lines mimicking the chalk traces that usually the forensic do around the dead bodies.
Oceano Mare: This book narrative revolves around the lives of a group of people gathered at a remote seaside hotel. One of them, the painter Plasson, strives to portrait the "face of the sea" using the water from the sea itself on his white, blank canvas. This illustration I made is also a quote to the work of Magritte, one of my favourite artist. He painted "The human condition", which represent a beautiful and stunning signal of our sense of representation and usage of our tangible-intangible world.
I Fiori del male: Le Fleur du mal is a volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire. The poems deal with themes relating to decadence and eroticism. Also, this illustration is a quote from one of my favourite painter: Odilon Redon. In particular, I thought to the "Eye-Balloon" drawing while I was drawing this. I've used a watercolour texture in order to communicate the intense and intricate universe of his poetical and philosophical works.
L'occhio del Lupo: This book narrative revolves around the lives of a wolf with an eye and an African teen called "Africa". In order to comprehend the wolf, which lives caged in a zoo, the young closes one of his eyes, staring at the open one of him. I found interesting the idea of overlap them and create a pleasing visual because I wanted to communicate the idea of similarity between their lives and their problems.
25 modi di piantare un chiodo: This is the autobiography of Enzo Mari, one of most important and influential designers ever. This is not a mere sequence of events in Mari's life, but an extremely interesting discussion through theoretical thoughts and concrete examples, in order to manifest the bridge linking design to human life. The title of this book, "25 ways to drive a nail", is the same one of the thesis he wrote at the young age when he graduated in scenography at Academy of Fine arts. I modelled a nail in Rhinoceros and I used KEYSHOT with an x-ray material, then I exported the nail rendering in .psd and worked there, achieving this cluster of nails overlapping each other, in order to obtain the sensation of seeing a lot of nails.
Profumo: This is a literary historical fantasy novel by German writer Patrick Süskind. The novel explores the sense of smell and its relationship with the emotional meaning that scents may have. The story mainly concerns Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, an unloved 18th-century French orphan who is born with an exceptional sense of smell, being able to distinguish a vast range of scents in the world around him. Grenouille becomes a perfumer but becomes interested in murder when he encounters a young girl with an unsurpassed wondrous scent. So I played with that idea of murder and scent.
I used a perfume bottle I found in my personal archive, I adjusted it until I thought it was ok to proceed to the rendering part, and then I exported the .psd and used Photoshop for the graphical part (the blood).
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