The Lost Boy of the Ozarks :: Early Halloween Special

tomer :: this biting horror story by Steve Freidman unfolds as a boy who's been lost in the woods a century ago creeps back into contemporary consciousness in the form of a ghost suspected as the reason behind a recent missing person incident of another boy, last seen in those same woods.
the first stab at illustrating this consisted of a ghost boy dragging a modern boy to the edges of the image and beyond, letting the woods take center stage. eventually focusing solely on the ghost boy, eating something not quite definable while looking straight at the viewer.

while digging for photographic references this eerie still of an out of focus girl standing in a perfectly sharp surrounding came up. seems to be the classic approach of getting that other-worldly ghost feel, in this case completely accidental. and so, for the execution a similar logic was applied only inverted.

for Backpacker magazine, art directed by Matthew Bates.