TINKER
Book Cover Design | YA Dark Fairy Tale Thirller / Gothic Fantasy
“Tinker” reimagines a familiar myth with sinister circuitry—a dark twist on Neverland where magic lures, but doesn’t save. I approached this cover with a focus on duality: wonder and horror, innocence and manipulation.
COVER DESIGN
The goal was to create a visual that felt immediately magical, while slowly revealing that something isn’t quite right. I wanted the design to lean into fantasy iconography—sparkling flight, distant stars, glowing fairies—while embedding a quiet unease in the framing, posture, and color story.
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A glowing pixie leads a boy through the sky, trailing light above a sleepy skyline. But his body is limp, his expression vacant. The movement feels like levitation, not flight. In early drafts, I explored even more overt tension—a chained ankle, puppet limbs, a darker sky—but ultimately landed on a composition that draws viewers in before they realize the danger.
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The color palette was intentionally limited to soft blues, cold shadows, and eerie glows to mimic nighttime wonder—but also to hint at artificiality. Like something beautiful, programmed to deceive.
CHARACTER DESIGN
Tinker (Tinker Bell)
Tinker is not the sidekick. She’s the system.
Once dismissed as background, she became the architect of her own legend.
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Her design is built around contradiction: small and glittering, but sharp-edged and powerful. She’s less a fairy than a warning light—glowing, glitching, and perfectly composed to seduce belief. I leaned into unnatural brightness, hard-edged glow, and rigid posture to separate her from soft fantasy tropes.
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Tinker isn’t flying for joy—she’s guiding. Her light creates the illusion of safety, drawing her targets upward toward a sky that promises freedom but offers no return.
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Her scale, wings, and traditional silhouette remain familiar, but everything about her presence is too precise—too symmetrical, too clean. She's designed to feel like a memory of magic rewritten by machinery.
The Boy (Peter)
He was the first.
The one she didn’t have to steal—just fix.
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In this universe, Peter isn’t just the mischievous boy who never grows up. He’s the prototype. The one Tinker found, rewired, and rebuilt into something useful. Loyal. Bright-eyed. Broken in all the right ways.
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Visually, he’s designed to mirror the fantasy ideal: tousled hair, open expression, and a carefree posture. At a glance, he looks like a storybook hero—but subtle details unravel that illusion. His eyes are too wide. His smile never reaches his eyes. His body moves as if it remembers being restrained.
His clothing is simple, lived-in—echoing the look of lost boys from familiar lore—but rendered in muted tones to contrast Tinker’s glow. He’s often barefoot, weightless, and trailing just behind her, like a puppet on a star-lit string.
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Emotionally, Peter is the perfect reflection of her legacy: someone who doesn’t question the static. Someone who believes in the version of magic she’s sold him. He doesn’t remember who he was before her. And he doesn’t want to.
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Together, they are both hunter and bait.
She whispers. He guides.
And no one suspects the boy who laughs as he leads others into the dark.
THUMBNAIL SKETCHES
My initial thumbnails explored different moments of movement and tension—testing how the viewer might read the boy’s role (willing participant or unaware captive).
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Early frames included swings, climbing bars, and suspended movement—meant to reflect childhood innocence being flipped on its head. As the story evolved, I shifted to mid-air poses that felt dreamlike but vulnerable.
Several sketches played with perspective: overhead, side view, and an angled “pulled upward” composition. In the final sequence, I emphasized verticality to symbolize escape—or abduction—while including the trail of stardust as both a literal light path and an emotional thread.
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Color comps focused on isolating brightness. The yellow glow of Tinker and the trailing spark contrasted heavily against the muted, midnight city—reinforcing the theme that magic doesn’t always mean safety.
TOOLS USED
This project was brought to life through an integrated digital workflow that prioritized both narrative depth and visual contrast. Each tool supported a specific stage in the design process, allowing me to move from raw ideation to polished execution while maintaining emotional tone and clarity of concept.
Adobe Fresco
Brainstorming
Thumbnail sketches
Composition exploration
Lighting Studies
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Procreate
Full Digital Painting
Digital Rendering
Brush Textures
Atmospheric Effects
Adobe Photoshop
Color Correction
Tone Adjustment
final Polish
Adobe InDesign
Spread Layout
Typography
Print Formatting
Proof Mockup