Background

Class assignment to take a podcast story and turn it into a book cover, using visual metaphors. The story I got was about a person living in a place with thin walls, so they hear their neighbors. However, there's a specific neighbor they end up focusing on and it starts to annoy them.

Sketches

Sketch 1: Birds screaming and disturbing a smaller bird from sleeping
Sketch 2: birds breaking into a house and screaming, disturbing the house owner
Sketch 3: a muddy dog coming into the house and shaking, having the mud get everywhere 

Iterations

The feedback I received favored sketch 3 because it conveyed the feeling of receiving something unwanted in a private space. Someone suggested making the mud be shaped like speech bubbles, to allude to the podcast. It was suggested I try different expressions for the dog and cropping, so these were the iterations.

Final + Gif

I ended up going for the full body to show the dirty dog, since the headshot might not have been obvious. I didn't go for the angry emotion since the dog was supposed to represent the neighbor the author keeps hearing, and the neighbor wasn't doing this on purpose. I tried to make the dog on the more happy end, while trying to have it unaware of their actions.