Kafka sulla spiaggia, cover illustration

I designed the cover illustration for “Kafka sulla spiaggia” by Murakami Haruki, a new special editon published by Giulio Einaudi Editore.

The cover is printed on two layers, a transparent acetate jacket for the typographic elements and the actual harcover for the naked illustration.

Thanks to Monica Aldi for giving me the chance to continue my collaboration with this amazing author.

The image itself is a digital compositing of a pencil and ink drawing (the boy and the cats) and a gouache painting (the sky).

Here you can see the illustrated layer with the final composited image.

This is an early design to mock up the acetate jacket elements position.

This is the final layout.

An early digital draft with different colour palettes proposals.

A study for the cover wrap around effect.

The digital lineart.

The pencil and ink underpainting.

Il Confine, Vol.10 cover illustration

I designed the cover illustration for “il Confine” Vol.10.

“Il Confine” is an ongoing comic book series by Mauro Uzzeo and Giovanni Masi, published by Sergio Bonelli Editore.

For this issue I used a pencil underpainting and coloured it digitally.
This is the final piece:

I started from a digital draft:

I checked the isolation zone for the book titles before locking the composition.

Then i drafted a lineart version of the image digitally, so I could print it and have it as a reference for the graphite piece.

The graphite piece, on Arches hot pressed paper.

Tasmania, Cover illustration

I designed the cover illustration for “Tasmania”, by Paolo Giordano, published by Giulio Einaudi Editore.

Thanks to Monica Aldi for giving me this amazing opportunity.

Tasmania was sold internationally in several countries and each most of them (if not all) adopted my cover image. Not all of the editions have the same graphic design, tho. The Japanese one, published by Hayakawa Publishing Corporation, is very peculiar for their need to use obi jackets that cover the lower part of the book. My design has a lot going on in that specific part of the cover so they opted for this interesting vertical wrap around solution that I actually like a lot.

The Cull, Issue n.1 Variant Cover Illustration

Delighted to be one of the 8 variant cover illustrators for "The Cull", the new series written by Eisner Award Kelly Thompson with the stellar visual talent of Mattia De Iulis, published by Image Comics

Mattia is a young artist with extraordinary qualities and wanted me to launch his new project. Being a variant cover, I had the privilege to go for an absolutely wild take. It was great fun doing it.

As a side note: It's my first original cover illustration for the US market, now that I think about it.

The image itself is a pencil illustration coloured in digital.

This is the official cover as it appears on the actual volume.

This is the digital draft I started from.

And this is the pencil drawing I used as underpainting for the final piece.

A BRIGHT SHINING STAR

Presented at Gubbdata 2022, my first entry for a Demo Compo.
A BRIGHT SHING STAR is a demo programmed and illustrated by Elder001. With this demo he introduced PECBM video mode: with PECBM you can get rid of several petscii limitation, enabling some real pixel art capabilities on this 45 years old beautiful machine. Luckily enough I ended up to be the first man on earth to ever do some real pixel art on a Commodore PET 2001: I tried to exploit some limitations this new technique has. PECBM can’t draw the whole screen in hi res / per pixel mode, you are limited to the equivalent of a handful of characters. Mixing some petsciii and PECBM together I managed to render full screen images. I drew some petscii images, then I hand picked the characters I wanted to replace with pixel art and created a collapsed map containing only those special characters, like you would do in a spritesheet. I then wrote a document with an array of the correct offset values so that Elder001 could actually extend back the graphics in the right place as they were intended.

The notefile included with the demo on real hardware, including my comments for the visual part:

The actual demo projection at Gubbdata. A BRIGHT SHING STAR topped at third position in the Wild Demo Compo.

Some process / petscii original files:

Black Well

“Black Well” is an horror story about an high school student discovering that his hidden self true form may be his worst nightmare.

Published on “Hobby Comics Speciale Morte” issue n.1.

Guardiana

Sono romano e sono cresciuto in una casa al limitare di Garbatella. Lì ho frequentato la scuola media "Antonio Vivaldi" e per tutti gli anni del liceo è stato il mio quartiere di riferimento, con un paio di luoghi diventati una tappa imprescindibile delle mie serate con gli amici. Il mio primo fumetto autoprodotto, Rocco, racconta di un ragazzo che abita vicino alla scala degli Innamorati e le sue avventure si svolgono tutte in quella zona. Garbatella è un quartiere a misura di bambino, dove le automobili circolano “chiedendo il permesso” ai pedoni, sospeso in una specie di estate perenne, con le vie dei lotti piene di pini marittimi e alberi da frutto, popolate da anziani, bambini, gatti e cani. Quando avevo sei anni, io e mia madre ci siamo trasferiti a vivere lì e il quartiere non era molto diverso da ora: un luogo in cui il tempo scorre ad una velocità differente. Garbatella funziona come un portale spaziotemporale, una soglia magica che, una volta varcata, ha il potere di riportarti nella dimensione esistenziale dell’infanzia, completamente libera. Mi piace pensare che la ragazzina con la lupa disegnate neI mio murale, rappresentano contemporaneamente una testimonianza e una presenza potente a guardia di questo tesoro inestimabile, un sigillo di protezione per questo luogo incantato.

Il muro è stato relizzato su commissione di ABC Lazio in occasione dell’edizione 2021 de ”La Città Incantata”, con la supervisione artistica di Lucamaleonte.

Work in progress photo log.

Draft digitale e palette definitiva.

Proof of concept e proposte creative iniziali:

Il Confine Vol.7

Cover Illustration for “Il Confine” vol.7, a comic book series published by Sergio Bonelli Editore written by Mauro Uzzeo and Giovanni Masi.

Gravitational Weaving

Gravitation Weavin' by Intelligenza Artigianale

In collaboration with Valerio Di Mario: https://be.net/valeriodimario
Valerio did all the animation and the graphic design while I took care of the display look and feel by setting up an actual shooting on several display types and configurations, taking advantage of real analog glitches and artifacts when possible.