Book 2 Cover

[Mikey]

Probably asked before and probably not a question that has a known answer. But, here goes anyway --

Why was this the only book (that I know of) that doesn't use a human model in the cover art (other than ax books, of course, heh) ? Rachel is drawn here. Just struck me as odd.

[Chad32]

It's an early book, and they were probably testing things out to see what they wanted to do.

[NothingFromSomething]

One of my favorite covers as far as the kid depicting Rachel looking basically exactly as I envisioned her from the descriptions, though that's probably a lot to do with it being an early book in the series and sort of influencing that.  I always found that especially with the later books some of the covers seem a little off with the actors/models, especially in the big montage one towards the end with all the kids arranged on the inside cover.  I think they switched people a few times throughout the series too.  But books like 2, and the first Marco one (5?) really matched the visual in my head like 100%.

[Chad32]

They definitely switched them. For instance, Marco on the book 5 cover doesn't look like Marco on the book 10 cover. Not to mention Tobias. Sometimes he looks like Jake's twin brother, and sometimes he looks like a younger blond haired guy.

[NothingFromSomething]

Yeah.  The newer kids portraying the characters on the covers definitely seemed...well maybe not younger, but definitely not older, given the 3 years or so that had passed.  The first 20 books or so seemed pretty much right.

[NickDaGriff]

They definitely switched them. For instance, Marco on the book 5 cover doesn't look like Marco on the book 10 cover. Not to mention Tobias. Sometimes he looks like Jake's twin brother, and sometimes he looks like a younger blond haired guy.

With Marco, I'm pretty sure I read that that was the same model, he just got a haircut prior to the shoot for book #10.  Applegate decided to work it in and had the other characters giving him grief over it, and then kept his hair short from then on.  He mostly looks different because the lighting in the cover for #5 was kinda bad.  And yeah, Tobias.  It's like they never read the book descriptions until #43.

[Chad32]

I think his skin was lighter in book 5, which is part of the reason it confused me. I originally thought maybe the guy on the cover was Eric, since when I started I didn't get all the books in a row.

[NickDaGriff]

Yeah, he's pretty darn pale in that cover, to the point where his facial features are actually getting slightly washed out, making him look kinda different.  Just kind of a bad lighting job on the photo shoot itself.

[Essam 293]

The first two books had different artists before David Mattingly was brought in as the series artist. The Chronicles used different artists as well, I believe.

[NothingFromSomething]

Probably not a popular view, but I always friggin' hated Mattingly's digital looking stuff.  The drawn art on the Chronicles spin-offs was so, so much cooler than that Photoshop stuff.