We Have Lost The President

When author Paul Mathews approached me about illustrating the cover for his futuristic comedy, We Have Lost the President, I knew this would be a project that would not only pose new challenges but also be something very different to what I’ve done before.

The starting point was “Auto-Tech” robot, Brian, who despite only playing a minor role on the story, would be very present on the website and in the promotion of the ebook, so a design was needed for Brian, who was Paul described as being “like a dustbin”.

Having produced a few concept sketches for Brian, we agreed on a design, which I then took forward, knowing Brian would feature on the cover itself.

I produced various cover concepts, which included a headless president’s suit and various scenes of Buckingham Palace, which plays an important part of the story. 

However, we eventually settled on a view of an empty President’s office, being frantically searched.

For the final version, the character in the foreground was changed to a woman, but otherwise the composition of the piece remained close to my concept sketch, with added elements of stacks of paper, and the objects on the desk, which included a slightly comedic cactus, to inject a little humour into the already chaotic scene.

With the cover art complete, the next step was to bring it all to life with an animated trailer for the book. This was also an opportunity to emphasise the humour and originality of the story.

We Have Lost The President by Paul Mathews is available now as an ebook, from Amazon.

THE ART OF SCATTERED SEEDS

I was delighted to return to the environments of Alice Sabo's Changed World Series, for the second book, Scattered Seeds. 

Although the cover for the follow-up to Lethal Seasons was to show a very different kind of scene, being part of a series, it was crucial to retain the same atmosphere, via a similar colour scheme.

Having discussed the cover with Alice, it was clear from the start that a scene showing derelict factory buildings, an abandoned cart and children hiding in the shadows, would best represent the second instalment of A Changed World.

This was my initial sketch. 

 

However for a while, I was unsure if this was going to work as a "cover" image, as to me it felt more like an interior illustration. But once Alice suggested including her character Wisp in the scene, it all came together. 

Initially, I put Wisp in the shadows with the children, but the illustration still lacked a focal point. So I brought him right out into the edge of the scene as an onlooker, and instantly the cover had direction and a journey for the eye to travel, from the view over Wisp's shoulder through the buildings, following the children to the water's edge. 

Here's the early version featuring Wisp hiding in the shadows (note that he's also holding a gun, which was incorrect!).

And here is the final illustration.

Keeping the same typeface that I used for Lethal Seasons, I incorporated subtle graphic “seed” elements into the typography of the title. 

For Lethal Seasons, I had only created the front cover, however with Scattered Seeds, I was creating the front, back and spine. The back cover was a more of an impressionistic sketch, looking back at the factory buildings and ruined landscape, from across the water. Essentially, an opposing view of the cover scene. 

And here's the final artwork of the front, back and spine.

Scattered Seeds is now available as an ebook via Amazon, and is coming soon in print!

Visit Alice's website at allthereisandtherestofit.blogspot.com for news and updates.

THE ART OF FLOODTIDE

I met writer Helen Claire Gould at last year's Novacon (the UK's longest-established SF convention). I was there as (as usual) exhibiting and promoting my artwork, and Helen was promoting her SF novel, Floodtide, which she had then published as an ebook. 

The Floodtide flyer which Helen gave me contained an intriguing excerpt from the book, which sounded right up my street. Great title, too. I remember at the time thinking that this was just the kind of story that I'm keen to illustrate. 

After the convention, we kept in touch and although Helen had painted her own cover for the ebook, she told me that she was planning a print version that would have a different cover, and asked me to produce the artwork. Perfect!

Floodtide could have easily conformed to your Hunger Games style of iconic graphic design, or being a complex story, a more abstract, typography-led cover, but Helen was clear that she wasn't interested in a cover that could easily get lost among other current trend/samey covers, instead favouring an illustrated scene from the story. 

Floodtide is a pretty chunky book, with a lot of characters and environments. However the majority of the story takes place in a complex of interconnected lava tubes and caves on the planet Naxada. Helen's expertise in geology forms the basis of the science in the story, so it was important to show this setting in the artwork.  We decided that a general view of this mysterious underworld would work for the back cover, with more of an action scene on the front, which was to feature Jordas, Soolkah and Yado, the story's three pivotal characters. 

Helen's writing has a very visual quality to it, and I soon found myself imagining Floodtide as a graphic novel, so I wanted to give the cover a slight pulp sort of look, through the vibrant palette, the composition and typography. 

One of my original illustrations for the back cover was based on an ice cave, but it wasn't right for the book. However I really liked the piece, so developed it further to an individual piece, which I entitled Void. 

While the front cover is a scene from within a lava tube (and illustrates one of the chapter cliffhangers in the story), the back cover shows an almost chamber-like scene featuring the entrance to the lava tube we see on the cover as well as a cluster of "glowcakes", fungus-like growths on the cave walls, which emit light. 

After the cover artwork was complete, we set about creating a teaser and trailer film for the book. This we decided to deliberately make in a mono comic book style, ad both the teaser and trailer comprised various characters, scenes and scenarios from the book.  Helen's son Jason provided the recording for the voiceover, and Helen put together the screenplay. My job was to illustrate everything, which I rendered in ink and finished digitally. I then edited the whole lot together and composed an original piece of music for it. 

The original idea was simply to have a series of static, illustrated frames, like the pages of a comic. Then it occurred to me that we could animate many of these very simply, using a parallax shift style effect. This really brought the scenes and characters to life and gave the Floodtide teaser and trailer a very distinctive look. 

Watch the teaser!

Watch the full trailer!

Watch the promo video!

Here are some of my original illustrations from the teaser and trailer:

Helen will be promoting and selling Floodtide at this year's Novacon, and the artwork will be included in my own display. A very appropriate time to celebrate almost a year's collaboration!

The ebook version of Floodtide was re-christened with the new cover art, and is available on Amazon. 

The paperback edition of Floodtide is exclusively available via Helen's website - www.zarduth.com - and at various local outlets in her home town of Peterborough. 

Judging a book by the cover

Now, I’m not proclaiming to be the god of book covers, but what does irritate and frustrate me (as both a reader and designer), is just how many dreadful science fiction book covers make it out there on to the shelves, real and virtual. 

Fortunately, there are a lot of very good covers; modern designs, unusual approaches and beautiful illustrations. But then you get those who give the rest a bad name – where a wonderful painting or piece of artwork has been ruined by bad typography. With almost twenty years’ experience as a professional graphic designer, its time to cast a brief eyeball over this common offender.

You know the type… a tacky 3D effect, or badly coloured gradient shading that instantly transports you back to the 90s. Naff free fonts that are often illegible. Or worst of all, a combination of all of the above! 

Then there’s the corroded typeface. Ah yes, that old chestnut. They’re a bit silly, but I admit, they do have their place. Just. There are plenty of these out there – some quite good ones – but if you’re going allow a designer to put a font like this on your front cover, then at least make sure they take a clean and existing typeface, and manually corrode or fragment it themselves in Photoshop. Not only does this make it unique to your cover, it also avoids repetition on the characters. Look at most battered typewriter fonts for example, and the same cracks in the same letters appear in the same place. Lazy. With a DIY approach, you’re in control of how extensive the damage to the text is, with a subtle approach often working best and preserving legibility.

But back to the 3D font. There really is no excuse – get rid of it, unless you really do want your book to look immediately dated and not particularly serious. But, hang on, I hear you say – doesn’t it have its place? Well, it does – but moreso in computer games and cinema than book covers, in my opinion. I can understand the need to make the title stand out as an element on its own, but the problem is, it is so often badly executed.

These are examples of some of the clichés commonly found on SF book covers. But I find too much font treatment is just overload, and ultimately, it distracts from the artwork. And in some cases, it renders your all-important title illegible. That word again. An instant fail.

Then there’s the dreaded 'Sci-Fi' typeface. This frequent offender is often narrow in width, sometimes with angular edges – or if not that, its something which resembles the characters from a 1980s digital watch. Basically, it cheapens the whole affair. An artist hasn’t slaved for hours over your beautiful cover art only to have it tarnished by a tacky, stereotypical typeface. 

These fonts often crop up online or on TV when everything is lumped together under the slightly cheap and somewhat nerdy, acne-ridden 'Sci-Fi' banner. It's Sci-Fi, therefore it must have a science fictiony kind of font, right? Wrong. Any serious author will of course, know that the preferred terminology for literature is science fiction or SF, with 'Sci-Fi' reserved for film and television. But that shouldn't be an excuse to cheapen the genre with a naff typeface.

While I agree that sometimes you might need to emphasise the typeface on a cover (depending on what its sitting on top of), the key to a successful execution is subtlety. Just keep any font treatment to a minimum.

The much-maligned drop shadow deserves a mention. It can be effective. But it can also render your background artwork completely flat. Again, best avoided or used with subtlety – for example, if you're batting with a light coloured text over light areas of artwork, the right amount can provide the required definition.

The choice of typeface is absolutely crucial – this is a whole sub-subject in itself. It can indicate the style or time period of the book and it also defines the genre. If I’m working on a cover illustration, I see it as part of my job to work on the text too, as it really is an extension of the cover art (whether it be illustration, montage or photograph). The choice of font helps build your brand and can often be a defining touch on a cover.

Needless to say, this sort of thing isn’t restricted just to the SF genre, but at a time when SF literature is very healthy, and the self-publishing market vibrant and buzzing, there really is no excuse for a bad front cover.

Next time, we'll talk about bad Photoshop montages. Until then...