This type version also showed more of August’s face and the editor felt there was more mystery when we covered part of his face with the type.ĮD: Ultimately we chose the final cover because you were able to get the cramped feeling from the illustrations, you can see the anguish in August’s face and Jack is hovering nearby in the shadows. I tried another version of the title lettering too that was meant to feel like Jack had written the title and the drawing, however we liked that the bolder type stood out more. We wanted the reader to see his face first and then the hands, but this ultimately looked a little too creepy and didn’t totally convey the possessive nature of the relationship. One idea we had to portray this relationship was showing August with just Jack’s hands on his shoulders. Once we switched to August as the main focus, I wanted to make sure we conveyed the idea that he was under the control of Jack. Originally I thought to put Jack front and center because he is The Wicker King, but we knew this was August’s story and were afraid readers would get confused by seeing Jack.

All of the drawings reference visions that Jack has: Blue Rapture, many legged animals, Raven, jellyfish, The Champion, two suns.ĮB: When it came to the photoshoot with the boys, we played around with the relationship between August and Jack. I wanted the drawings to feel “crazy” and claustrophobic, so you got the sense that these hallucinations were taking over. This led me to thinking about what the drawings of a hallucinatory boy would look like. I really latched on to the fact that Jack couldn’t stop drawing these cross hatch marks. The following are some snapshots of the cover creation process:ĮD: The concept for gold drawings around the boys was an early idea I had. It was very easy to choose the model who “played” August, because besides fitting the physical description, he had good emotional range and was good at taking direction. I had a vague idea of what kind of “artifacts” would be in the interior and had to see which models could portray the characters.

ED: We had a casting call for The Wicker King, because we needed a range of images and emotions from the models.

The wicker king book