Jose Domingo – Designer

I have 20 years of experience as an illustrator, having worked on many fields from comics to animation, press and commercial, both in digital and print.

Being and author myself I understand the importance and emotion that goes in a good cover, and I love illustrating and designing them! There’s no better feeling than capturing the emotion of a story in an illustration.

I love working with clean lines, round shapes, and bright colors. My style is cartoony, clean and energetic, therefore my artwork fits very well with children’s books. But test me! I also love darker, grown up stories and can push my artwork into creating impactful images to catch the reader’s eye.

I always put story and emotion first (if there’s a touch of humor all the better!). I am communicative and I love to collaborate and learn as much as I can about the subject in order to achieve the best result.

When we work together, first we’ll chat about your story and the elements that are important for you to communicate on the cover. Then, we’ll start the design/illustration work.

I like to break it down into 4 rounds, from broad to detail , and progress to the next only once we have approved the current round. This way, we are always on track and the process is smooth. You’ll have the confidence of knowing and approving what we are doing at every step.

Step 1 - concepts: I’ll work on some initial concepts in rough sketches to explore ideas and different approaches to the cover. Here we can try and discard broad-range ideas, and do a few revisions until we find the best one.

Step 2 - sketch: Once we decided on the concept, I’ll proceed to make a detailed line sketch, shaping out the details, such as what the characters look like, the environment, expression and details. It is also the moment to make some color sketches and see which direction we can take in terms of color and mood.

Step 3 - final linework and basic color: with the sketch approved, we’ll go for the final line art and apply a basic layer of color. In this step we’ll make sure you are happy with all the details and make small adjustments if needed.

Step 4 - final rendering: this is the final image! Applying more detail and texture to color, adding light effects, coloring line and, overall, pulling out all the tricks to make it look amazing!

When also doing design work For your cover, I’ll include the design or lettering aspect right from the beginning and work on it along the development of the illustration to achieve an holistic result.

To finish the job, I’ll export and adapt the image to all the formats required.

If all this sounds good to you, I’m looking forward to hearing about your story!