Project Four: Book Cover

For the book cover project, I'll be doing Dracula.  I have to say, I'm surprised no one jumped on this one before me!
This book has been around so long, and is so ingrained in pop culture, I'm a bit unsure if that will make it easier or harder on me.  On the one hand, there's a lot out there to inspire me.  On the other hand, the pop culture image of Dracula is not the same as the actual character in the book.  I love the original novel and I'm aware of those differences, but I still want to watch myself to make sure I don't start using stuff that's from the plays, movies, TV adaptations, etc.  Here's a few book covers from over the ages that I found:

Quite a variety!  And these are only a few of the many I found just from a quick Google search.

So, what should my approach be?  Even though Dracula is considered the star of the show, most of the protagonists are iconic themselves, particularly Van Helsing and Lucy.  (But Mina Harker was always my favorite!)  I'd like to figure out some way to feature our heroes, if not as prominently.
I'm still iffy on the issue of whether to do a more representational or symbolic cover.  Like, illustrate a great scene/character, or build some sort of design that has symbols from the book.  I'm leaning towards the latter...
Thoughts?

Poster Critique Version and Updated Version

So, here is the version of my poster I presented for critique:

And here's a little update where I got rid of that box and played a little with the size and out lines of the font:

I do like this updated version better.  I wish I'd thought of it before I printed!

Poster Progress

Here's what I have so far:

It's still really rough, but I like the direction I'm going in.  What really worries me is how much trouble I'm still having with Photoshop.  Just getting this done took me way too long.

My Review

I know this is unrelated to class, but I got a short review published at Burnaway magazine through my internship.  I've never gotten to do something like this before, and I'm pretty happy about it.  It's here if you want to read it.

Poster Project Update

So, I think I've got a pretty solid idea of what I want to do.  I was playing with this design, and this is sort of the basic color scheme I'm going with.

 Except I plan for the finished product to have a black background, try to make those colors glow (does anyone have good advice on how to accomplish that, by the way?)

This is the more cleaned-up design that I've chosen.  I'm going to trace this sketch more neatly in Photoshop and work from there.
Comments?  Advice?

Poster Project Ideas

Okay, new project!  I've only come up with a few events and sales I might do, and so far I'm not sure about any of them:

• Garden Lights Holiday Nights at Atlanta Botanical Gardens
• Go West! Exhibition at the High Museum
• The upcoming How to Train Your Dragon sequel (this one probably isn't a great idea, since it's pretty far off and not a lot of material has been released).
• The Hyperbole and a Half book

So what do you think?

Edit: Decision made.  I'm doing Garden Lights!

Close to Finished?

I think I've almost got these ads as good as I can make them:

3 x 10.5

5 x 5

8 x 10

Thoughts?