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.
Earlier this month my cover artwork for Alice Sabo's upcoming novel Façade, was revealed.
And here it is.
But how did it get here?
Alice has described Façade as a space fantasy, so while SF to a degree, she was keen that the cover art had a more distinct fantasy look to it, courtesy of one of the castle buildings that feature in the story.
So we had agreed the scene would be a castle type structure with a small craft coming in to land, overhead. My first visuals were based on traditional/historical style castles, but these weren't right for the description in the story. While a cover should be flexible and not too descriptive, I do feel is is important to have a pretty faithful depiction of what you'll find in the book.
I was also keen on only showing just a portion of the castle – more of a suggestion of looking at part of a much larger, complex structure, than trying to squeeze an entire castle on to the front cover. That would also leave it more open to interpretation. So various angles and viewpoints were explored - this included one version seen from one of the castle balconies:
The building structure needed to be more grand and impressive, with cathedral-like arches, towers and spires, and I felt the best way to show this was to view the scene from a low angle. So the next – and what became final – version of the cover focused on a more gothic style structure, seen through a clearing in the surrounding forestry:
I added a figure on one of the balconies, looking up at the craft, in anticipation of its arrival. In the final painting, this actually became two figures, loosely based on two of the story's characters:
It became clear while I was working on the final artwork that the castle needed to be taller still, so I applied a greater perspective and added more towers and levels, allowing the structure to soar into the stormy clouds above.
While small, the ship was a crucial detail. Because of the name of the craft (you'll have to read the book to find that out!), Alice was keen that it could be almost bird-like in its design:
So there's plenty to explore in the scene overall, and I was very pleased with that. I wanted to create an image that made you want to explore it; to wander up a staircase or peep in through a window. It certainly came with its challenges, but that's what it's all about, right?
When designing a book cover, the author has the challenge of finding the artist who is right for them, and that can bring their book to life. The artist has the task of taking what's in the author's mind and transposing it for the artwork, while putting their own style and identity on the design. The Art of Guy Erma and the Son of Empire goes behind the scenes of the artwork to Sally Ann Melia's popular series of books. It brings together concept art and designs as well as rough sketches for all the book covers and associated artwork. Sally Ann Melia worked with Belgrade-based company Sugarbricks to create the artwork – proof of how the Internet has really enabled creativity and collaboration no matter where you are. It takes you through the journey of each cover, from rough drafts to final designs. You really get a feel for the amount of work, effort and dedication that has gone into the project. As an artist and cover designer myself, I found The Art of Guy Erma and the Son of Empire an interesting insight into a vital part of today's vibrant self-publishing industry. It is also the first time I have seen such a book produced to accompany a series of novels, and that in itself is refreshing – clearly a must for fans of the series. It does make me cringe when I see websites offering free or cheap book cover resources for authors, such as pre-made covers. Not only are they putting artists out of work, but you have a cover that isn't necessarily unique to you. With so many authors putting their work out there today, good cover art has never been more important in the marketing of your book. Your cover has to be as unique as your writing, and The Art of Guy Erma and the Son of Empire is a fine example of how to do it properly. Sally Ann Melia's The Art of Guy Erma and the Son of Empire is available now on Amazon.
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!
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.
The cover art for Katrina Mountfort's début novel, Future Perfect had already caught my eye, being my sort of thing – so when the email came through from Elsewhen Press asking me if I'd be interested in illustrating the cover to Forbidden Alliance, the second book in Mountfort's Blueprint trilogy, I said 'yes' before I'd even finished reading the email.
Anybody who has read Future Perfect will be familiar with this particular vision of the future, where a highly regulated society with a culture based on external appearances, are made to live inside huge Citidomes, following a bio-terrorist attack. There's a clear nod towards Logan's Run in the storyline, which evolves around the discovery of the world beyond the confines of the Citidomes and what kind of people have chosen to remain in the outside world.
Elsewhen Press' own artwork for Future Perfect focused on the divide between life inside and outside of the Citidomes. So having established a variety of environments in the first book, the challenge for the cover of Forbidden Alliance was to expand upon this and somehow incorporate elements of the different environments, from a prison camp to a rural village, the Citidome and a narrowboat on a river.
This artwork also had to be in mono to match that of the first book, so another challenge for me was how to approach the scene without having my usual vibrant colour palette to fall back on.
So I worked up several rough concept sketches, trying out different perspectives and angles, but I found that trying to incorporate all the elements was just too much for a cover – yet they were all vital things to include, so what do you do?
Then it came to me – why not create the scene as viewed from within a prison camp? The simple inclusion of the barbed wire told the viewer everything they needed to know about the viewpoint of the scene, without trying to squeeze in security fences and prison buildings.
As for the other background elements... part of the first book was set in a village in rural Derbyshire called Ashford-in-the-Water, which happens to be a place I know well and have even photographed. So I had my own photos to hand for reference, and the church being the tallest building in the village (also featuring in the book), it was the obvious choice.
I've always had a fascination with the idea of a city encased under a glass dome – ever since watching the BBC's wonderful adaptation of The Tripods in the 1980s. I guess you could call that a benchmark, along with Arthur C. Clarke's Diaspar in The City and the Stars. This is therefore a concept I have previously explored in my work – most recently with Last City, inspired by Clarke's novel, and an earlier piece of retro-futurism, Escape.
However for this cover, the Citidome didn't want to completely dominate the cover, yet it does dominate the landscape. So I was faced with the additional challenge of getting that balance of elements just right.
There is no clear divide as there was on the Future Perfect cover, but the river and the narrowboat instead provide a central focal point for the scene.
Here is the final digital draft, before I started work on the actual artwork.
This was the first time I've read a story which has been partly set in a place I know, so it became all the more real. Having been immersed in Katrina's world with a knowledge of the real location, the process for the creation of this cover felt very natural and comfortable.
