I’ve been working with Scott Christian Sava of The Dreamland Chronicles on the cover art for the debut novel in my Young-Adult Science-Fiction series, Zack Jackson & the Cult of Athos. 
This will be the first in a series of posts showing the cover from initial conception to finalized version.
The first sketch is of two of the main character, Zack Jackson and Jenny DuBois. They’re both humans. Zack is about 12, Jenny 14. In this first sketch, I really liked Zack’s look; I don’t think I changed any of it. Jenny, however, I describe as having long hair, with two braids. I also described it as “dark” in the first draft, but Scott suggested something unusual, perhaps blue. I hadn’t really thought about going that far with her look, but I kind of like the idea.
Zack and Jenny are both Junior Rangers, the 43rd Century-equivalent of Boy & Girl Scouts. Zack is from a typical Earth family in Wamsutter, Wyoming. His father is a civil engineer who works in San Angeles (a megaopolis comprising most of the southern Californian coast from north of San Francisco to south of Los Angeles; commuting that distance is no problem in 4212) and his mother is a teacher. Jenny is from Messier Habitat, a Bernal Sphere at one of the Mars-Sun Lagrange Points (very nationalistically French).