Michael Cross has been able to see spirits for as long as he can remember, and he uses this gift to help ghosts move from this world to the next. Sometimes, people don't realize that they're dead, and Michael has always tried to keep his wits about...
I've been using Canva too much recently. When I started using Wattpad I used random art from google for covers and banners, not thinking much of it. These days I want to completely avoid using art without credit. I've made a lot of banners in order to replace the artwork I'd been using, and I'm in the process of hiring artists to draw covers for a lot of my stories. And as this book is such a personal passion project, I want it to have only the best work! Even for banners.
If you go back to check, you'll notice that I've made new custom banners for every chapter. Flower symbolism has always been interesting to me, and I love flowers artistically. Herbs and plants are important materials for spiritualists like the Cross family, and Andrew loves plants! He cares for a lot of them and includes them in many of his paintings. So what better imagery is there for this series? Each chapter now has its own unique header with a different flower and a symbolic meaning. I like them a lot!
The banner on this particular chapter is a slightly altered version of one of Canva's preset album cover designs. I've also made an album cover using that preset, by the way, for when I eventually publish the official Spotify playlist. I'm waiting until after the story is finished to share that, as a lot of the songs are spoilers.
Anyway, I've also been playing around with making character aesthetics. I've been collecting pictures from Pinterest for a while now and recently figured out how to utilize the grids in Canva and how to adjust picture colors. I now have aesthetics for Michael, Andrew, Isabelle, Maria, Joseph, Celina, Mikaela (Cross mama) and a character that has yet to be introduced named Ricardo! For now I'll only share the ones for introduced characters. Two of them, anyway, because Wattpad hates high-res pictures.
—MICHAEL—
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Michael's colors are black, grey, and blue. Most of the imagery here is obvious enough. He plays the cello, works for a newspaper company, and is originally from the big city. He also loves the night sky and finds the moon calming, and it's one of his main motifs. The blue crystals are representative of his preferred "materials". He likes lapis lazuli, sapphire, smoky quartz, sodalite, obsidian, moonstone, and (blue) goldstone. The line "look who's digging their own grave" is from the Bastille song Icarus. Imagery of Icarus and the Sun is used to describe Michael's relationship with Andrew in later chapters, in which he thinks of himself as Icarus and Andrew as the sun that he cannot touch. Michael has been established to have strangulation scarring on his neck, which is symbolized here by the glowing wire wrapped around a throat. The shot of a hand reaching outwards represents the near-death experience that resulted in said scars, in which he saw the tunnel that leads to heaven and was able to see into its gates. If I made this again I might switch the location of the neck and the crystals.
—ISABELLE—
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Izzy's colors are black and red, and her aesthetic is pretty self-explanatory. Most of it just has to do with her look. The neon sign is a reference to her being bi. I imagine she's the type to listen to vinyl records. And of course, she swears a lot, hence the balloons.
I ran these through two different compression sites just so I could post them here and actually have them show up because I made them HUGE in Canva lmao. Took me like four tries and I can apparently only post two of them per chapter... oh well.
