Japanese book covers

Student project to Personal project - Book cover series that are related to each other without using words. The style I went with is a simple block colours, with a minimal style and focus on the realistic designs was the brief given to us, created 3 different book covers, with the same theme, so I went to the of Japan. As I like the culture and have been to Japan before and have a lot of photos for reference that I could use as a guide and inspiration. But each book cover had to be a bit different different, with the same theme and style. I went with Japanese sport, culture, and fashion. I made all the spines the same and all front covers have a person in the theme clothing, and the back covers have a building design in the correct theme. I also created matching bookmarks to go with each different book cover.
This was when I was first starting to learn how to use Illustrator and all its different tools and effects, so I few years later with new and improved skills I decided to have a go once again and create full book covers with matching text and where the word for the bio will go on the back. I kept the same idea with people and the main elements, but this time change sport to history of samurai worriers instead. I also updated the style to show off my new skills, but kept the same design theme to reference that this is a redesign like an updated logo.