Hey, everyone! My awesome cover artist Tricia Lupien just wrapped up the cover for The Adventures of Strongarm & Lightfoot – Scratching a Lich, which means the book is ready for final prep and release! I’ll let you know when the book goes live on Amazon, but for now, let’s reveal in the glory of the full cover, with and without the cover text.

I dig this cover so hard.

When I sent Tricia the character descriptions for Derek Strongarm (left), Erika Racewind (center), and Felix Lightfoot, I told her I wanted the cover to have an old-school Dungeons & Dragons handbook/module vibe. Aside from the fact it matched the tone of the story — fun, full of adventure, and slightly irreverent — D&D was my first serious exposure to the fantasy genre, so it felt appropriate on a personal levels as well as an artistic level.

As always, Tricia sent me screencaps of her work in progress, and it’s always cool to see her develop a cover image for me. She continued to justify my decision to throw money at her right off the bat when she sent me the logo she worked up…

That couldn’t be more perfect. Tricia even commented that it might be the best logo she’s ever created and I’m not going to disagree.

After that Tricia sent me shots of the main art in progress, starting with her rendition of Habbatarr, the titular lich of the story (seen here with a silly caption she added for our amusement):

I will point out that Cover Habbatarr bears very little resemblance to Prose Habbatarr, but I honestly couldn’t care less. I left the character’s look to Tricia’s discretion and imagination, and Cover Habbatarr screams D&D module cover villain, so there are absolutely no complaints here.

Then she started working in the protagonists, and this is a mid-process image; you can see the rough outlines beneath the characters, but the details have yet to be laid down…

Even at this stage you can get a grasp on the characters — Derek’s boyish face, Erika’s lean physique, Felix’s scruffy, roguish nature…

Those are partial inks, which start to bring in some of the fine details and fix problems with the earlier version (note that Felix’s head is smaller and his left shoulder has been fixed). Next up: the beginning of the color work:

And with more of the basic colors laid down, and before the addition of a background.