Recently, my longtime publisher, Dynamite Entertainment, announced a significant reboot to three of their core, female-driven titles—Dejah Thoris, Vampirella and Red Sonja. I've written 25 issues of Red Sonja (plus various short comics for anthologies), 19 issues plus shorts of Vampirella; no Dejah, sadly.
But this time, I was hired to design "sigils" to be incorporated into the overall trade dress of the covers (and possibly, if they catch on, for inclusion on t-shirts, mugs, misc. merch).
The new designs were made available online, so here's some detail images of the various "sigils" I did.
RED SONJA
Unlike the sigils for Dejah and Vampi, I was deliberately going for a brush-stroke/smeary/rough-hewn feel, with an eye towards color adjustment. It's all vector art, so, to tailor the sigil to the color scheme of any individual cover it is used on, it should be easy for Dynamite's designers to swap reds and browns for other colors.
Despite the relative complexity of Dejah's, Sonja's "sigil" took the longest.
ABOVE: Each sigil started in black and white, went through three to six versions, and then tweaked and finalized as color versions after client feedback.
ABOVE: Detail view of Red Sonja Sigil.
ABOVE: Red Sonja Sigil, in situ along with Dynamite's Red Sonja logos and company trade dress.
VAMPIRELLA
ABOVE: Black and white and color comps for client.
ABOVE: A detail view of the Vampirella Sigil.
ABOVE: The Vampirella Sigil, in situ with Dynamite's logos and trade dress.
DEJAH THORIS
ABOVE: Dejah Thoris Sigil, black and white and color comps.
ABOVE: Dejah Thoris Sigil, detail view.
ABOVE: Dejah Thoris Sigil, in situ with Dynamite's logos and trade dress.
