Character Art for Interactive Book Promo Ad

I was hired on for this project to illustrate characters and a background for an interactive fiction promo website for a book release.

The book is called Oblivion, by Robin Hemley. In the book, forgotten authors go to a place called the “Cafe of Minor Authors” in Prague when they die, trapped in Oblivion. The promotional site required visitors to talk to author characters in the cafe (fictional and historic) and figure out a mystery. People who figured out the mystery quickly and submitted the correct answer would be given a free copy of the book as part of the promotion.

I was asked to design & illustrate the characters with ink styling work lightly inspired by the late 1800s ink artist Aubrey Beardsley. My creative director wanted the character colors to be slightly muted but not drab, and to have an old marker texture quality.  I was directed to illustrate a background with a dreamy painterly feel, and help visually flesh out characters who lived during multiple eras (including late 1800s, 1920s/30s, 1960s, 1980s, etc.).

I illustrated all of the characters. Some portraits are based on real-life historical figures, like JK Bangs and Else Lasker-Schüler, while others are fictional. For the fictional characters, I was given character inspiration photos. I also painted the background, character silhouettes, podium, and interactive table items for the ad.

The promotional site is no longer live, as it was only meant to be accessible during the book giveaway promo, but I’ve included some screenshots of the final live promo site.

The project images below include my concept sheets and final asset preview sheets, along with screenshots from the live promo website.