Stormdancer Cover Reveal: Thunder Tiger Edition

I’m so super pleased to reveal the cover for the Stormdancer “Thunder Tiger Edition!” So without further ado:

This edition features Buruu, the Thunder Tiger in the foreground and deadly lightning in the background! As a bonus, the cover is embossed with Jay Kristoff’s signature.

The standard edition (shown below) features Yukiko in the foreground and a tiny version of Buruu—the Thunder Tiger— in the background. Yukiko very much dominates the cover, which is why the Thunder Tiger Edition was released! The Thunder Tiger Edition is for die-hard Buruu fans and is a must-have on any fan girl/fan boy’s shelf!

Here’s the original version for reference:

Click to Enlarge

Oops, wrong one! Yes, that’s totally me. Dressed up as Yukiko. I’m such a nerd. Thanks to my SUPER AMAZING MOM for creative directing and photography! ♥

Right.. back to Thunder Tiger! The Thunder Tiger Edition is available in hardback only!

Contest Information

Okay so time to snap out of the role-playing world for a minute! 😛 As I described above, the Stormdancer Thunder Tiger Edition is not real (yet??). I drew this alternate Stormdancer cover for Jay Kristoff’s Raiders of the Last ARC contest! Here’s a bit about the creation process! 🙂

When Jay announced his contest, I immediately knew that I had to draw something. I am a bit of an artist so I just knew that’s what I had to do! One problem.. my digital drawing tablet is currently in storage in the UK. AHHHHH!!!! RAGE RAGE RAGE! Okay, deep breaths. I figured there was nothing I could do about that. I couldn’t drop $1400 to fly to the UK to get it. And I couldn’t justify spending $300 to buy a new tablet. So I did it caveman style: with a mouse. (I know, wtf was I thinking?)

I opened up my sidekick Photoshop and got to work. The first step was actually cutting out the “Stormdancer” title text from the original book cover. Surprisingly, this took quite a long time with a mouse! My wrist started to cramp up! Then I started on the background and finally, Buruu. Lastly, I added Jay Kristoff’s signature. I wanted it to look legit so I actually did some Googling, found his signature, and traced over it!

Honestly I’m not extremely happy with the final result and I know part of it is due to a lack of experience drawing feathers (officially the bane of my existence), but a large part of it was due to the goddamn mouse. Seriously, I can’t imagine ever NOT drawing with a Wacom tablet now. 🙁 Feathers in particular because they require whispy kind of motions.. if that makes any sort of sense. I feel like I could have done better with a tablet, more time, and more patience.

But I guess we do what we can and at least I tried, right?? 😀

Then, after finishing the Thunder Tiger picture, I thought.. “This isn’t enough!!” So I decided to create my own Ashley version of the original cover. I immediately ran to my mom and begged her to look through her closet for “Japanese-looking outfits.” Seriously, her closet is like.. well, you can find anything in there. So we threw an outfit together, I went hunting for the Indonesian sword my sister gave me, and we took photos! A bit of photo-editing and Photoshopping later, and ta-da!

So please, wish me luck in Jay’s contest! And if you’re entering as well, may the odds be ever in your favour!

Side note: I totally wish a Thunder Tiger Edition existed. Hint hint.

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