Fear of the Dark

Nyctophobia is fear of the dark, which is a hard concept to get across on a book cover, especially without resorting to monsters and ghosts and stuff (which I did to start with!), so I did a LOT of roughs and not-so-roughs for this cover - none of which were used in the end, as the final covers had nothing in common with them really! The idea for the UK cover (above) came out of a day dream I had at my desk after banging my head against a wall for half an hour having run out of ideas. It's based on some photos I took of a lightbulb was almost finished as soon as I'd mocked it up. The US version (below) was kind of an accident - I was mucking around with some textures for something else and they looked kind of noirish and spooky, so I added a house and a moon and it was pretty much done.

I still really like some of the rough ideas I had to start with, so I might try and reuse parts of them in something else in the future. They were deemed (correctly!) to be too graphic-novely for the tone of the book, or just a bit too supernatural/action based. I got quite far in the rendering of a few of my favourite ones too, so its a shame to just forget about them. Anyway here's the very first lot I did. Originally in the story the house were the action takes place revolved to face the sun, so one side was light all the time, and the other dark. That idea got dropped though, so immediately some of these weren't quite right. An unfortunate side effect of doing covers for books that aren't yet finished.

The below was the cover version I liked best, but I couldn't make it work quite right - the figure was too small, or squashed up, and the shadows cast by the lamp that form the letters didn't work in the way I wanted them to. This led into the version at the bottom, which used the same idea, but makes it a bit less flat. This was definitely too much like a comic though, although I like it in its own right. I might finish it off at some point just for the sake of it.

The final book goes to print this week. On the opening spreads of the internals I gave over a few pages for the lightbulb slowly tuning on, page by page - almost like a flick-book, which seemed like a cool thing to have instead of a bog-standard title page. It gave me the idea of actually trying to animate it properly though, and this is the result (be kind, it my first ever attempt at this kind of thing!).

Nyctophobia is on sale 9th October 2014.

The Raven's Banquet

More cover art, using the same style as the Lupus Rex cover I did a few weeks ago for reason other than I thought it looked cool and wanted to try it again! The sky is a darker colour than I wanted originally cos I screwed up and couldnt get the coverlines to standout properly (again)!
Final cover design, black and white linework and roughs below. The Green man face is a little pic for the chapter break pages on the internals, which was shamelessly ripped off from some photo ref supplied to me by the author, so I can't claim much credit for that. Pleased with the Raven though!

EDIT: just found out this book is getting a super-limited paperback release (it was ebook only up until this morning!), which is awesome! I've had to put together a full cover design today -  Here it is:

The Way To Babylon

This is the second cover I've done for the Different Kingdoms series by Paul Kearney, kind of time/space slip novels about people swapping between real and fantasy worlds. The layout is identical to the first book, which made it far easier to get on with as all the design work and style is set in stone, and I can just start making the art. However, I'm also still very pleased with how the cover for book one turned out, so it was slightly intimidating knowing I had to match the quality of that, which is a bit of a high point for me I think. Overall I reckon I did a good job - i don't think the main image is quite as atmospheric as before, but the colours and texturing are much better, and the two books sit together pretty well.

As before I started the cover in Indesign, laying out the text on a file that i'll eventually use to make the pdf files for print, so I can work around the words when I draw image in the centre and nothing overlaps awkwardly. I then copy/paste these basic shapes in Illustrator to draw the pictures, building up layers of increasingly dark detail to give it depth. This time round there's a strange symmetry between the 2 sides, which wasn't initially intentional - things like the wall in the foreground on both halves, and the broken cart vs the old wheelchair. Plus the general contrasting style of the 2 large buildings. I might carry this on to book 3 if possible, to add another level of detail into the art.

Next I paste these black and white vectors into photoshop and go to town with the textures to add some colour and life, also using the same indesign shapes from earlier as layer masks to show the edges of the circles and the split between the worlds, which gets lost a bit when doing the illustrator work. I also add in some leaves and rougher detail which is much easier in photoshop than illustrator. Next up: book 3!

The Different Kingdom books will be released sometime next year by Solaris. 

Blood Kin

Another bit of cover art finished. Doing loads at the moment to get ahead for my impending Paternity Leave. This is for Blood Kin by Steve Tem. He was really keen for it to be a proper bit of overgrown, rotting, slightly psychedelic southern gothic. Below is the cover art without cropping/text design, which for once I didn't try and incorporate from the start.

As this cover has quite a lot of similar elements to Different Kingdom (trees/old houses/leaves) I was keen to make it as different as possible stylistically, so I inked most of the silhouettes by hand then put them all together afterwards in photoshop. For the Kudzu leaves in the foreground I made a some custom brushes in photoshop and built up layers of ever brighter/bigger leaves. Really helped to add some depth to what was quite a flat silhouetted picture. The skull in the bottom right was a last minute addition too. I loved doing this - the whole process/technique I used is something I'm keen to try again!

Scans of the ink drawings and my first mockup from a few months ago.

Cover Design - Update

PLASTIC

by Christopher Fowler

Up until 3 days after the print deadline this cover didn't exist. I'd mocked up loads and loads of cover designs for this book over a period of weeks, and none of them were ever quite right, before finally settling on a photofit style thing (below). 
Anyway, whilst hurriedly designing the books' interior (having already blown the deadline) it suddenly dawned on me that a simple black and white scalpel/text layout I'd put together for the title page looked far more striking than the proper cover image, so I completely redesigned the whole thing that afternoon!

Some of the many roughs, sketches and mockups I did:

In the end I reused a few of these discarded ideas on the full cover design.

Cover Design

THE FICTIONAL MAN

by Al Ewing

First off: this is a fabulous book, go and read it. I hope I've done it justice with this cover, because it really is one of the best things Solaris have published. In the book, characters from novels can be programmed into clone bodies to act in TV shows and Hollywood movies, so for the cover I decided to make a face from words and sentences, and Al sent me passage of text from the story to use for this purpose. I like the weird way the sentences form new ones as they run alongside each other. My workmates were particularly amused by the 'I Hate Drawing' that appears above the right eyebrow (complete accident, and untrue). This has also got to be the first piece of art I've done that required proof-reading...

For once my rough looked quite close to the final version...

Aside from the colours, the back cover and spine layout for the US version are very similar to the UK one, but the American sales team/buyers weren't taken with the crop (or much else) on the original mockup. Initially I just extended the drawing out further than I intended and added Al's name into the face, but i felt in lost some of the impact from the UK one, so decided to just do a more traditional book title design, using the art as a design element rather than the whole cover. Below are some of the many colour options I came up with to try and placate them to start with. I like the repetition in this - it makes it looks quite surreal...

For more information on The Fictional Man click here
To buy a copy go here (Amazon)

DRAG HUNT

by Pat Kelleher

Not much to say about this one as it was really quick to do. It's an ebook only novella, bizarrely about the native american trickster god Coyote and the hunt for his missing penis, which usually resides in a bag around his neck (yep!). After knocking a few ideas around I came up with this ridiculously phallic totem pole made up of imagery from the story, hoping Pat would see the funny side of it and not think I was taking the piss out of his book! Happily he thought it was pretty funny too, and suggested a ton of cool stuff to add in.
The roulette wheels on either side got removed in the name of good taste, but I've included them here because, frankly, I'm juvenile. Pointless fact: the Saxon runes at the bottom say PYE.

Buy a copy here (Amazon Kindle edition)

BLOOD AND FEATHERS: REBELLION

by Lou Morgan

This is the second book in the series by Lou and as ever she's ace to work with. Ridiculously enthusiastic, full of ideas for inspiration, but quite happy for me to try whatever I think might look good on the covers. I'm really pleased with this, especially as an evolution and improvment of the design from the first book, so it still matches the style but without me having to tread old ground.

Ink drawings used in the final art.

To find out more about Blood and Feathers click here, and to buy a copy of Rebellion, click here!

As a final link, here's an interview I gave last year about the creation of the cover art for the first Blood and Feathers book on shewolfreads

CRASH

by Guy Haley

I love painting space. It was nice to add in some graphics this time too, although the numbers (representing stocks and shares) were a complete nightmare to do - I sat for an hour or so typing about 800 descending random 4 digit sequences, without causing weird repetitions and stuff. Try it (or don't actually), it fries your mind...

The rough layout was a joint idea by Sam Howle and me. This was done waaay in advance for a catalogue, so by the time it came to put the book together I just re-did the whole thing.

Below is this final cover design.

Buy a copy of Crash here.

LIFE ON THE PRESERVATION

by Jack Skillingstead

This is the cover for the UK edition, the US one having been done by the excellent Vincent Chong. So as not to compete with Vinny's I went as graphic as possible for this cover. Below are some of my rough mockups, some of which taking the idea of living inside a preservation dome a bit more literally than others. I'm glad this version was chosen too, the others where probably a bit obvious.

Buy a copy of Life on the Preservation here (Amazon)

Space! Gas! Planets! or: Solaris Rising volume 2

My first bit of art for 2013! Cover for the second Solaris Rising anthology edited by Ian Whates. These covers can be quite text-heavy so I laid the words and planets out together in Indesign/Illustrator before starting in Photoshop to make sure I left enough room for everything, a technique I first tried last year on the Solaris Rising 1.5 ebook. Works quite well this way, as the text really sits in and around the art. Here's the final cover, fully extextinated (yeah, it's a word):

The volume 1.5 ebook cover. Really happy with the fuzzyness of this:

I keep thinking one day I'm gonna stick a spaceship on one of these covers. Here's a couple of roughs I tried, one slightly more in earnest than the other...

I started both images as vectors/fonts in Illustrator and Indesign to get the layouts right, before pasting all the basic shapes as separate layers into Photoshop for colour and texturing. Here's roughly the how the files started off:

Design Led Covers

Some more cover art I've been working on for Solaris, this time a bit more graphic than illustrative. The Regicide is the only one I actually did any real drawing for, but I mucked about with it in Photoshop so much you can hardly tell any more! This cover will probably get tweaked a bit before print as I had to do it quickly for a catalogue, and I'm hoping they'll shell out for a metallic spot colour on the text and maze but we'll see about that...

The other covers are for some books Solaris have the e-publishing rights for by James Lovegrove. They needed doing pretty quickly which is why we chose the style they're in, but its nice to do the whole lot at once and see them all tie together. The top 3 are mine and the bottom 2 where done by Luke the other Solaris designer. All 5 took us about an hour and a half but I think they've turned out well.