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.

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?

Book review: The Art of Guy Erma and the Son of Empire

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.

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.

For the love of books

I’ve been drawn into a book on the strength of its cover so many times – so it’s always a pleasure to have the opportunity to work with an author or publisher, to be able to turn their words into pictures and visualise their worlds for the cover art.

But that comes with a degree of pressure and expectation. There’s the artist’s inner struggle to enjoy artistic license but also (and primarily) to fulfil the brief and correctly interpret what’s in the author’s mind (and indeed the pages of the book). The recipe for success is – unsurprisingly – achieving a balance between the two. After all, we want a happy author and a great cover.

Some projects require a very specific scene or illustration indicative of the finer details of the book on the cover; others may warrant a more abstract approach or a scene that while not actually in the book, is still an accurate representative of the story.

Every artist has their style, and if you’re asked to do somebody’s cover, it’s usually because they like your style, and believe it is right for their book and audience. This simple fact in itself should quash any moments of self-doubt which crop up along the way (and we all have them!).

In many ways, being asked to provide a cover is to be invited on part of the author’s very personal journey of the creation of their book – and hopefully attributing to its success. However, for me it goes beyond being just a job – it’s for a love of books, a huge respect for the author and their creative work, and the simple prospect of creating something tangible. As an avid reader myself, being able to contribute to something that goes on to have a life of its own and reach people all over the world is quite simply, a real privilege.

Dark Designs

As my cover artwork for Alice Sabo's forthcoming book Dark Deeds has now been revealed I can go a little deeper into its origins and how we arrived at the final version.

The book's protagonist, actor Asher Blaine is making a comeback after getting over an alcohol problem. But from wildfires to rockslides, everything is against Blaine and it seems that somebody is out to try and kill him.

Alice was particularly keen on one scene in the story where Blaine's life hangs in the balance (again), as he finds himself dangling from a cliff.

Here are two of my initial mono draft sketches. The first shows just Asher's hand as he's about to vanish into oblivion; the second is his striking silhouette hanging on for dear life – which was the one we went with.

I had originally envisaged this as a night scene, but it actually takes place late afternoon, as a dark and heavy storm is closing in.

This led to me exploring several options, from a rain storm to vibrant, fiery sunsets and ominous, threatening weather...

After several variations in colour, light and even the kind of clouds, the final illustration came about, complete with the addition of the sea below.

 Alice Sabo will publish Dark Deeds in early 2015...

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!