The Origin of a Cover: Mastermind's Manual

The process of creating a Mutants & Masterminds book certainly doesn't end with writing, developing, or even editing the actual text. Comic books are a visual medium, and M&M is well known as a visual game. Art and layout play important roles in making M&M products what they are, and perhaps no single piece of artwork is more important than the book's cover. Although we say, "don't judge a book by its cover," people do, and the cover is the first thing a potential reader sees, whether in advertising or at the store.

In this Super-Vision, we take a look at the development and creation of the cover of a Mutants & Masterminds book, in this case, the Mastermind's Manual.

Cover Concept

The cover starts with a concept, an idea of what the cover image should look like, that develops in collaboration between the line developer and the art direction. The author of the book is also often brought in and consulted to get ideas. In this case, since I was the author of the Mastermind's Manual, it was fairly easy to have the author involved in development of the cover.

Since the Mastermind's Manual is primarily a book for Gamemasters and contains a lot of rules options and variants, I wanted a cover that involved villains, power, and lots of different options or things going on at once. Given the title of the book, I figured it should be a mastermind villain, which suggested some interesting possibilities from among the signature characters in Freedom City. I settled on Overshadow, the archetypal armored megalomaniac and leader of SHADOW. With that in mind I came up with a short description along with a sketch that clearly demonstrates why I'm a writer and developer rather than an artist:

The mastermind villain Overshadow is seated in a throne-like command chair in a large, dark room, overlooking a large bank of display screens showing various scenes (some of which could be clips of other M&M artwork).

The title or M&M logo could go across the big view-screen at the top and other elements can be worked into the image. It should look like the control center of the mastermind's lair; maybe Freedom City heroes are fighting SHADOW soldiers on some of the screens, with others showing images of the Earth and a countdown to the firing of some super-weapon the heroes are rushing to stop.

Concept Sketch

After Art Director Hal Mangold agreed on the concept of the cover, the next step was to get the cover artist to do a sketch to show what the cover might eventually look like. Even just the concept sketch from UDON demonstrates a clear grasp of the concept. It also runs with it, really improving upon my bare-bones idea and crude sketch:

Much of it is just suggestions of figures and forms, but it's clear UDON gets the idea. So the concept sketch is approved and the artist can go on to refine it.

Line Art

The finished black and white line artwork solidifies the figures and images of the cover, bringing the sketch into sharp focus and detail. First, we get Overshadow and the foreground, including his throne-like command chair:

Note how the image has been cropped a bit from the original concept, putting the focus more strongly on Overshadow and allowing the mastermind to dominate the foreground rather than sitting more in the middle of the cover. The angle has also changed slightly so the viewer isn't looking down at Overshadow as much, but facing him straight on, giving him a stronger presence.

Finished Line Art

With the foreground line art complete, the artist fills in the individual view-screens behind Overshadow with images from the concept sketch, refined and detailed. Note that none of these images were in the initial cover concept: the artist came up with different scenes and elements using the signature Freedom City characters as a resource, another example of getting good results by giving artists some room to get creative.

Now our cover is really taking shape. The details all look good and match up with the existing Freedom City concept art. (Note that Overshadow must be reviewing at least some "tapped" footage, given the image of the Centurion vs. Omega in the lower left corner. Maybe the leader of SHADOW has TiVo?) UDON gets a green light to finish things up for the final cover image, which means color!

Final Cover Art

What a difference some color makes, huh? Although the B&W line art is great, just look at how the final image springs to malevolent life. The stronger foreground colors make Overshadow a more solid presence compared to the ghostly images on the view-screens behind him. The coloring also adds subtle lights and texture to the control throne and Overshadow's armor, along with the computer graphics overlaying the images in the screens (so we can see Overshadow is getting more information than just the images).

Even with our excellent cover art finished and approved, our cover isn't done yet! There's still the matter of inserting the title graphics, cover text, and trade dress that will immediately tell everyone this is a book for the World's Greatest Superhero RPG. That's where Art Director and Graphic Designer Hal Mangold goes to work.

Completed Cover

To finish the cover, Hal adds title graphics, the Green Ronin logo and trade-dress, and the cover-credits, so you can tell at a glance this is an M&M sourcebook. The final cover elements help to pull it all together so it's more than just an abstract image: both the title graphics and the artwork say "mastermind!"

That's how we bring you the quality you've come to expect from Mutants & Masterminds and now you know what to look for when the Mastermind's Manual makes its way onto game store shelves in just a matter of weeks. Keep an eye out, because you know that Overshadow will be watching...