When given the opportunity in August of 2023 to design a potential magazine cover based off of an urban legend, I practically jumped for joy. My excitement only rose when one of the examples given was Slenderman. Slenderman is an urban legend that was popularized in the early 2000's and 2010's both through a number of "Creepypasta" stories and multiple video games such as Slender: The Eight Pages; a game that I look back on with fond memories despite always being too scared to actually beat it growing up.
While I was enthralled with the idea of creating a Slenderman centric magazine cover, I also wanted to play around with some other urban legends. One of these was Bloody Mary, other urban legend that holds some nostalgia as she was a common subject while I was in elementary school. The Jersey Devil, Boogey man, and Loch Ness monster were also candidates for the cover.
Once settled on the design, I first took to traditional pen and ink on illustration board for all the texture and majority of the shading. After that I scanned it in and added color digitally.
Originally I had added some glitch effects on the tendrils that are escaping the picture plane as a nod to the game I'd played as a kid; In Slender: The Eight Pages your screen gets more and more obscured by TV static the closer Slenderman is to killing you and ending your game.