skin & bones: Dana Terrace Sketch Collection
Dana Terrace is an animator and illustrator best known as the showrunner for Disney TVA’s The Owl House. Her art style is cutsey and macabre, with a tongue-in-cheek humor that shines through even in illustrations of body horror. She has worked on Gravity Falls, The Mitchells vs. the Machines, and DuckTales, and she is currently working as the creator of the new web series, Knights of Guinevere.
When developing skin & bones with Dana Terrace, we wanted to make sure to balance the horrific and cute aspects of her work, allowing both themes to shine through in every element of the design. With designer Dana Capistrano, I developed skin & bones with Dana Terrace to pay tribute to her artistic journey.
skin & bones was originally sold through a crowdfunding campaign on the Gallery Nucleus website (check out an archived version of the page here), and sold out of the first print run in one month.
Developmental Editorial
When developing skin & bones, the core concept of a sketchbook style book emerged very early. The first hurdle was sorting through over ten years of Dana’s artwork. I sorted through several thousand individual sketches and rendered artwork, selecting the over 300 pieces that made their way into the final book.
We also decided to include elements that invited Dana’s fans into her artistic process, and made skin & bones feel more exclusive, including photos of Dana’s sketchbooks, an introductory note from Dana, and small blurbs about Dana’s original characters.
Design by Dana Capistrano, art by Dana Terrace
The balance between cute and creepy is most notable in the final cover design. The designer and I selected an image that we felt encapsulated Dana Terrace as an artist, as well as a few extra sticker-style elements to match the sketchbook style of the interior pages. The final result is playful, while still highlighting the horror art Dana is so well known for.
Copywriting
Though there was limited copy on Dana’s book itself, I wrote the author biography and title copy that were featured on skin & bones’ preorder page. An edited combined version of these pieces of copy are still featured as title copy on the current skin & bones purchasing page.
Author Biography
Dana Terrace is an animator, illustrator and writer based in Los
Angeles. Her work is influenced by everything from Hieronymus Bosch to The Powerpuff Girls to Satoshi Kon's Paprika. After graduating from SVA in 2013, Terrace worked on projects like Gravity Falls and DuckTales 2017, though she is best known as the creator and show runner of the Peabody Award-winning show, The Owl House, and co-creator and show runner of the upcoming online series Knights of Guinevere.
Title Copy
skin & bones, Dana Terrace's first monograph, chronicles a small percentage of her work over the past ten years, showcasing a selection of sketches and illustrations from over 200 sketchbooks, 52 notebooks, and countless digital files. Best known as the creator and show runner of the critically-acclaimed TV show, The Owl House, Terrace’s art balances cute and macabre in equal measures. Delightfully morbid and adorable, skin & bones is a must-have for fans of Terrace’s work.
Content Warning This book contains some gore and body horror. 16+ recommended.
via gallerynucleus.com
HTML / Webpage Design
For this particular project, I also designed the webpage for our preorder landing site. I created assets for the header, section titles, ‘buy here’ and ‘sold out’ buttons, and preorder package images.
I also coded the page in HTML to ensure ease of purchase and a clear layout for customers. I later used the code from this project to create an HTML page for pre-order landing sites, which Gallery Nucleus continues to use.
via gallerynucleus.com
I also designed banner images for Instagram, X, and the Gallery Nucleus homepage that redirected to the preorder landing site, incorporating elements from the cover design to maintain aesthetic cohesion.
Production / Managing Editorial
It was important to the overall design and concept of the book that while the cover felt bespoke and upscale, the interior captured the vibe of one of Dana’s sketchbooks. We chose a sustainably-sourced paper that mimicked the paper stock that Dana favored in her sketchbooks, with a white tone to accurately capture the colors and pen strokes in Dana’s art.
The final result feels like it could have come directly from Dana’s desk, with an underground feel that appealed to Dana’s core audience.