Background: For this series, I was inspired by a specific detail from the Catching Fire movie. When Katniss is training before the Quarter Quell, she enters a small arena where she can shoot moving computer targets. Whenever she shoots through a target, it explodes into tiny pixel blocks and disappears. The pixels convey a dystopian but also technological feel. Panem is a weird mix of poverty and technology, and as Katniss transitions from District 12 to the Capitol, she sees the disparities between technology in the districts. The decay of Katniss’s figure also symbolizes the decay of Panem throughout the novels, which directly relates to Katniss as she is one of the leaders of the rebellion through all three books.

Process: For the covers I used silhouettes of Katniss in progressively higher shooting stances throughout the books. I then translated those pictures into little pixels and started to make them disintegrate off to the left side of the book to show movement. The most challenging part of the process was trying to balance what I wanted to do with what Illustrator could handle. I wanted to group the pixels together that formed Katniss’s body and hair together and then lay a gradient over them. However, every time I would try to complete the action, the program would crash, and I would lose some of my progress. I eventually moved on because of time and I decided to incorporate the grid idea tossed around in my final critique.