Ever wonder where the mockingjay image came from and the story of how it came to be on the cover of the Hunger Games book?  Well wonder no further, Tim O’Brien the creator of the famous mockingjay shares the story of how the mockingay came to be on his blog.

Elizabeth Parisi, my wife and Executive Art Director at Scholastic worked on a job this Spring that went on and on and on.  Part of the reason was that everyone who read the manuscript  loved it and imagined different images and solutions.

This seems to be an important book for Scholastic and they and she spent quite a bit of effort trying to get it right.  Great illustrators were hired to do covers for this book and the versions they came up with were inspired.

She doodled a sketch of a pendant of a bird (RISD graduate in illustration) and asked if I could do a sketch for her to show.  I did and it worked.  People jumped on board and I took it to finish.
I think the cover is quite powerful and the book is a hit.

Check out the various stages of the mockingjay !

You can check out Tim O’Brien’s blog HERE 

Source : Drawger via HungerGamesMovie