Designing a Wrap Around

I'm not sure if any of you have read the graphic novel Nimona by Noelle Stevenson, but I gotta just put this out there: it's really freaking good. It's great mixture of fantasy and it plays with what boils down to as superhero dynamics. It starts out with a young girl petitioning a 'villain' to allow her to become his sidekick. As the book goes on, the reader begins to realize that although the main characters are technically 'bad guys', those characters end up unearthing dubious plans made by the government, as well as unlocking some of the characters bigger mysteries. 

This is the official cover and art for the book, and I take a lot of cues from it in my wrap around cover. Colors and characters mostly. 

But a wraparound cover usually needs something a little more unifying. You have to make both the front and back covers look like individual compositions AND a third composition combined. 

It is possible to create an illustration that is more similar to a collage, like this one I designed for Howl's Moving Castle.

I chose to create scene, rather than just displaying the characters and trying to arrange them like puzzle pieces. I think I thought it would be more dynamic.

But I really just wanted to have a decent reason for her to have this face. 

I have mixed feelings about the final product. I wish I had made the castle and cobblestones a little less rigid. I wish I'd rendered the shadows and fire a little more so they didn't look like cut outs. Truth be told tho, I was sick when I made this, (had to have surgery shortly after finishing it) so I can put most of it up for my brain not working. And possibly impatience.