Jonny Duddle

Invisible Fiends: Mr.Mumbles! EeeK!

I was out and about yesterday and I spotted another book cover I'd done on the shelves of W.H.Smith! 'Invisible Fiends: Mr. Mumbles' by Barry Hutchison was published by Harper Collins in February.

This was something a little bit different for me, at least as far as children's publishing is concerned, because it's HoRRoR!!! EeeEK!!

I painted this cover last summer, after reading Barry's manuscript. It gave me the heebie-jeebies, and scared the life out of me. I thought 'The Pirate Cruncher' was scary until I read 'Mr.Mumbles'.

The 'Invisible Fiends' series is about a boy named Kyle who has forgotten the imaginary friends he had as a small child... But they've not forgotten him....

So Mr.Mumbles is the first to return, and it was all a bit scary for a big wuss like me, particularly the climax in a disused swimming pool which further reinforced my fear of dark, murky water.

I love the graphic look of the finished covers with the slit and torn edges. I went through a few different ideas with the designer, Nina Tara. Here's the first rough:

And a second version, where we tried to include the whole figure, but it lost impact and Mr.Mumbles was too small on the page to get a good look at his stitched up mouth and other details:


So we kept with the full figure on the back of the book, and ended up with a cool, creepy close-up on the front. Here's a close up of the final art, with the temporary paper edge from me, before Nina added the torn white edging and the type:


Next up is Raggie Maggie. I've not read the book, but I painted the cover from Barry's description of the character. I wasn't going to show this one, because I'd not seen the final design, but I just found this on Amazon:



I'll post some WiP, sketches and roughs for 'Raggie Maggie' when the book is published in August!