"The Sands of Fate" Anatomy of a cover

Here it is! The cover of the second Ribeye the Bullbarian Adventure:

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The cover began life as a rough layout that I drew. My original idea looked like this. At first we weren't quite settled on the villain. Here the deadly 'sands of fate' are looming over our heroes, but the exact nature of the threat was just a little too ambiguous:

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Mike Milo did a more polished layout that more closely resembles the finished cover art:

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Finally, Mike penciled and inked the finished line art. I worked out the background image, and placed the final elements together. Then I colored the characters for the final cover.

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