A series of mishaps

This project has been slightly ridiculous, the result of not having a clear direction and concept up front, plus not being in a constructive frame of mind. This particular brief was - and still is, as I haven't finished - to create a hypothetical book cover for an illustration publication. Before the internet really came into play, illustrators would pay to get their work published in a collection which was then posted to various companies who may have needed their services. We were asked to design the front and back cover along with the spine. What you see below are pieces that include all of these elements - created as a single image which has to work also when it's folded. At the bottom is the first concept which I just sat down and drew without planning, and that set the precedent and rough ideas. I then spent a lot of time rendering the piece above it which has more refined concept, but the image still didn't read properly even though the idea behind it was stronger. I finally sat down and created the third image not to long ago, and ironed out all of the legibility issues - creating a pen outline of the final image (the second image down). The fourth image, directly below, is a rendered version of the final compilation. This is the piece that completely frustrated me a few days ago, as I rendered it using photoshop and I'm not at all proficient in this area. So, four days later, and the image is nowhere near where it should be. However, unfortunately you have to learn the hard way with this, and I now know how I'll approach it for the final. This should be up in a couple of days - perhaps I should've done it by hand as I did the first two, but I do need to push computer rendering. Please take the time to click on each of the pieces as they're fairly detailed and you'll be able to figure out the ideas driving them.