Behind the Façade...

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?

Under observation...

I've been intending to post about my most recent piece of digital art, Observation Point for a while, so finally here we are.

One of the great things about bouncing ideas around for book cover projects is that there are inevitably ideas that come out of the mix that have potential to be pieces in their own right, and that's exactly what happened here.

This was my original mono sketch – which wasn't right for the cover in question, but I felt it had something about it which I was keen to explore further.



As I've said countless times, it was the science fiction and space art of the 1970s and 1980s which first caught my imagination as a boy and that ultimately inspired me to create my own art – and it continues to inspire me to this day. There is certainly a gentle nod to that special era of SF art in my work, and that was certainly starting to come across here.

A simple image, of an enormous space vessel, in orbit above a planet; a classic SF image. The planet was originally going to be the Earth. But then I had a last-minute change of heart, and decided to make a heavily cratered moon instead.

This was when I discovered that craters are not as easy as they look. It is all about the light and shade, and getting the shape right. Which at first, I didn't. My initial craters were very shallow and more resembled a large pitted orange than a moon!



If these were impact craters, then we needed to see that impact, and the build-up around the edge. But once I'd worked more on really giving the craters more of a three dimensional texture, the piece really started to come together.

When it comes to painting starships or other alien structures, I've started to adopt a much looser approach. Providing the style is consistent with the rest of the piece, and that the perspective is accurate, then I don't mind it looking a little more sketchy or impressionistic rather than something too crisp and clean, which has that evident "digital" look to it. 

The craft itself isn't massively changed from the original sketch, and despite the slightly rough and ready appearance, it still has a good deal of surface detail and texture:



Rather than showing a scene of a spacecraft in flight, I decided to have it floating in space, in an ominous Rama sort of way. And through that, came the slightly unsettling title of Observation Point.

And here is the finished piece...



...nicely rounded off with some text specially written by Richard Hayes:

A spacecraft orbits a heavily cratered moon, the distant sun of this star system casting its light across the scene. The vast size of this vessel’s engines tell us that it has travelled far to reach this point, but they are now cold and silent – it has reached its destination. Even so, there is still much activity aboard the craft. Lights appearing through windows show that its occupants are busy going about their work, and its surface is covered with sensors and antennae which suggest that its role is to measure and analyse data.

We are left in little doubt that these space travellers are here to observe something, but we are not certain what that can be. It might be some feature on the surface of the moon below, or on its parent planet which lies outside our view. What we can be sure of is that the civilization that sent this spaceship to this remote location had the resources, and the will, to dispatch a sophisticated mission – possibly for purposes of scientific research, or perhaps for some more sinister reason.

The Great Digital Art Debate

Nobody can deny that digital art has become an accepted art form, certainly over the last decade. It plays a vital part in the entertainment industry, from concept art for films and games, through to book cover design and illustration.

Any artist working digitally will have come from a traditional medium background of painting or illustration. For me, working digitally gave me the best of both worlds and has allowed me to explore a colour palette that I could never satisfactorily achieve with traditional paints, and it also came without the mess. I'll be the first to admit that paint was never my preferred medium – give me ink or pencil and I'm happy.

So as far as the design and creative industries go, digital art is a crucial commercial skill and one in high demand, with fierce competition. As a medium, it has certainly found its home on the commercial industry side of things.

But is it art?

Of course it is. Just a browse through some of the thousands of artists showcasing their stunning digital works on the Deviantart website demonstrates its versatility. For many artists it is their preferred medium of expression.

Then I hear you cry, "But there's no original!" 

And this sparks an interesting discussion. On numerous occasions when I have been exhibiting my digital art (signed, mounted one-off prints), people have said "I'd buy it if it were an original" and that sort of thing.

I thoroughly understand and accept the "no original" argument from a collector's point of view – there are the obvious facts like the value of a piece and it being the only one of its kind. I have no problem with that and the truth is, it doesn't really apply to digital art.

Of course there is an original - and it's a digital file on a hard disk. But there is no physical original as such. A print is perhaps as original as a piece of digital artwork can get. Some artists may produce one print and that's it. Others may go to the extent of supplying a buyer with their hard disk, or at least the original file on a CD or USB stick, having erased the original – but then you don't hang a USB stick on your wall.

Digital art is a medium in its own right by today's standards, and one in which it is accepted that there is no physical original. However, the amount of time, creativity and effort which go into a making a digital piece is often no different to that of a painted canvas. You can achieve the same nuances, minute details and unique touches of the artist's hand – and all that simply depends on the artist. The major difference is one is made of paint, one is made of pixels.

Funnily enough, at this year's Novacon art auction, I sold several prints of digital art. The one original in my display (a black & white ink drawing) didn't sell.

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. 

It moves!

I have been working on an animated book trailer for a client recently. This gave me a good excuse to buy some new art pens and get drawing. But I was then faced with the realisation that I had to animate everything, which posed a whole new challenge in itself – but one which was soon solved, thanks to Photoshop's animation palette.

Although the effect I wanted was very simple (the "Parallax shift" effect), it was really exciting to suddenly see my piece of artwork come to life! And this got me thinking, why not look at animating some of my own artwork...

This kind of animation – at least the way I've done it – is reliant on your artwork being in layers, so that each object you wish to move is on a layer of its own. This was when I realised that some of my pieces were all painted on one layer, so there wasn't anything I could do. However, those were in the minority, as I usually save a layered version of a piece of digital artwork, should it ever need to be revisited.

So I went through my work and picked out the pieces I felt would work nicely, and set about having fun with them, and I'm really happy with the results. It's simply fascinating to see these scenes I'd spent hours working on, suddenly taking on a life of their own and becoming three dimensional!

So here it is, my SF&F art showreel – complete with my own music, which is a track called "Home", from my latest album, Panorama.

Cover creation - Forbidden Alliance

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.

And here is the final cover art:

And here is all of the above - in one minute!

Digital Deluxe

Following on from the previous post about the joys of the Amiga home computer and the musical inspiration I gleamed from the games scene, it's now time to shift the focus on to art.

My journey into digital art began way back in 1990 at the formative age of 12. Up until that point, I had got by just fine with pencils and paper, without the addiction or distraction of a home computer. Of course, all that was about to change.

One day at school, our art teacher, Mr Cronin, took us to a dark and dusty corner of the art room, and introduced us to The Computer. Its was an Acorn Archimedes, and it had this thing called a Mouse – which looked like a house brick on a cable with a funky ball mounted in the underside. Mr Cronin then went on to demonstrate the power of a paint program, and the mouse swung into action.

This was the moment.

First he created a gradient from red to yellow, and before long we had a sunset! A few clicks of the mouse later and we had a house with windows. Wow. Up until that point, my only experience of computers were friends’ C64s or Spectrums that played pixely games with chirpy music. The notion of making artwork on the computer hadn’t even crossed my mind.

Mr Cronin then took the excitement up to 11 – by clipping out a section of the image and creating a brush… which he then zoomed around the screen and painted with, creating an impossibly crazy pattern.

I was sold. I’d seen the future.

I got home. “Dad – Can I have an Archimedes?” 

My pestering for one of these mysterious Archimedes machines went seemingly ignored, until one day when my Dad went out one morning and came back with this exciting new computer – a Commodore Amiga A500.

I still remember the squeak of the polystyrene packing as I extracted the Amiga from its box. Of course, the computer coming with the 10-Star Games Pack, would lead to a whole other distraction, but also in the bundle was this exciting looking software package entitled Deluxe Paint II…

Deluxe Paint – or Dpaint as it was usually referred to – was made by Electronic Arts and for a long time the main art/paint program on the Amiga. And it was the answer to all my artistic needs. The Amiga being smarter and more advanced that the Archimedes, Dpaint offered so many functions and hundreds of colours.  I’d soon be drawing cartoon illustrations, Daleks, space ships landscapes, you name it. All with the mouse, I should add! And as I progressed through later versions of the program, I’d explore the joys of even more colours and animation features too.

DPaint opened my eyes to digital artwork. I’d go on to design my own games on the Amiga, make comics, write stories and even do my school work at any given opportunity. 

Fast forward to the mid 1990s and my arrival on a college course in computer graphics and design. I was delighted to find a room full of Amigas. Of course, I already knew Dpaint inside out. The following year, it would all change and we’d be working on Macs and PCs running this new thing called Photoshop. But Dpaint’s user interface proved to be the perfect training ground for the more advanced Adobe software.

Some of the last work I ever did in Dpaint on the Amiga was some college coursework from that time – a journey inside a giant computer, giant engine and giant machine – and here it is! What fond memories.

Looking to the stars...

For my latest piece of artwork, I finally decided to create something inspired by my favourite SF novel – The City and the Stars by Arthur C Clarke. Not only was this the book which sparked my obsession with reading science fiction, but it also re-ignited my passion for SF art, thanks to Chris Moore’s amazing cover artwork.

I had always been hesitant in doing an illustration based on The City and the Stars, as I feared it might never be as epic or stunning as Moore’s cover to the Gollancz paperback, nor do justice to such an awe-inspiring novel. But then I decided to ignore any artistic inferiority complex, and simply make my version – a piece in my own style that embodied the concept of the book, while looking at another angle of visualising the it. 

Version 1...

The joy of working digitally meant I had a great deal of flexibility. Taking the novel’s protagonist Alvin, and the domed city of Diaspar, the first version I created showed a silhouetted figure staring back towards the city.

Version 2...

From this, I tried a second version, without the figure, instead adding a starship (which if you’ve read the book, you’ll know its relevance). The addition of a planet in the sky was more metaphorical, suggesting the notion of other worlds beyond our own. Overall I didn’t think this worked as well without the human element – it’s key to the book after all!

I looked at the dozens of covers the book has had over the decade – some better than others; some brilliant, some completely irrelevant! So I was pretty confident my interpretation was going along the right lines, but I wanted to create something that would also work as a piece in its own right, outside of the original inspiration. 

The finished piece – "Last City"

All the elements were in place, and it was simply a case of finding the right balance. So here’s the final version, now titled Last City, which was derived from a tagline on one of the early editions, “It was the last city built on Earth”. 

This takes the piece into its own, especially viewed with Richard Hayes’ accompanying text, which you can read on my website…

A short blog about art

I never got along with paint. Always liked the idea of it, but during my school and college days in fine art, my otherwise good pencil pieces would be ruined as soon as I started to paint over them or add colour. So I always used to, where ever possible, draw in ink, pencil or charcoal. Life in monochrome.

That’s why the humble pencil became my weapon of choice for a long time, and probably why many of my digital paintings started out as pencil sketches.

What I love about working digitally is I'm finally able to enjoy working with colour, in a non-messy way! I feel I've struck a happy medium here, especially for my science fiction artwork – which makes up the majority of my output!

Having spent the last 18 months working mostly on music projects, it’s been great getting back into the flow of illustration. I guess I always feel a little guilty of referring to a digital piece as a “painting”. OK, it’s a digital painting; a common term in the industry. I’m just applying pixels, rather than oils or acrylics. More recently I’ve been referring to my work as illustrations. But in truth, they’re both. 

Time for a quick flashback (pretend there's an echo there).

After completing courses in fine art and computer graphics at college back in the mid 1990s, my plans to go on to a course in illustration fell by the wayside when I was offered my first job in advertising back in 1997, and out of that my career as a graphic designer was born. Work and life took over art. I guess that’s why it took me over a decade to get back to creating my own artwork, which coincided with the rediscovery of my love of the science fiction art of the 1970s and 80s. 

By 2010 I was in my early thirties, and well aware there was a whole generation of genius young CG artists working away out there, alongside the ageist disclaimer on almost any given opportunity or competition that "entrants must be between 18–25". Cue confidence crisis.

While I’d previously had work published in books and magazines, it wasn’t until 2011 when my piece “Awakening” was chosen for inclusion in “Brave New Worlds”, an exhibition of utopian and dystopian art down in Richmond-Upon-Thames, that I found my confidence in this new age of digital art.

It's so easy to get hung up over whether your work looks realistic or is accurate, etc. It's not important! I would say most artists suffer a lack of confidence at most times. Creating a piece of art regardless of medium is such a personal experience (and often a turbulent journey!). Then you unleash it to the world. And thanks to the Internet, its easy to feel surrounded by other artists who are better than you. They're not – they're just different. Quirks or imperfections add to the personality and individuality of a piece, and the evident touch of an artist's hand still triggers an emotional response. If you feel interested, intrigued or moved by a piece of artwork, digital or not, then its done its job no matter.

The motto I've always stood by is, that if you're really fired up and into what you're doing, there will be hundreds of other people out there who love it too. Keep at it! 

New artwork - "Hibernus" series

I'm currently working on a series of pieces which I have given the seasonal title of Hibernus.

What started out initially as an exercise in painting snow and ice has evolved into this suite of artworks exploring the snow-covered planet of Hibernus, with your subtle hints of other-worldliness along the way. Three pieces are currently in production, with two of them possibly completed with a fourth to follow. Maybe even a fifth. In the meantime, here's a preview...