Category Archive for ‘artwork’ rss

New US Covers

August 11th, 2011 • 69 Comments

A tricky business, covers.

The cover is one of the most important tools a publisher has to actually sell a book – with the majority of books where your publicity and marketing budgets are going to be tiny, much the most important.  If a bookseller really likes a cover they might stock it much more prominently.  If they hate it they might refuse to stock it at all.  A great cover won’t necessarily make you a smash hit, but it’ll certainly go a long way towards it, and a bad cover can without doubt sink a book, so it’s vital that, whatever else, a cover have solid commercial concerns at it’s heart.

From that point of view you’re trying to kill many, many birds with one stone, often birds flying in opposite directions.  You want to attract a core audience that you feel will be best suited to the book, but at the same time you don’t want to repel other readers.  You want the style and content of the cover to reflect the content of the book and the style of the author, though of course exactly what that means is entirely subjective.  You want to some extent to give people something familiar, some visual touchstones that make them think, ‘ah, I’ve read this sort of thing before and this is the sort of thing I like,’ but at the same time you want there to be something unique about it that makes it stand out from the crowd and make readers think, ‘ah, this is special and striking and better than the fifteen other books it’s shelved alongside.’  Then you also, in an ideal world, are looking for some kind of visual recipe that establishes a strong brand for the book, series, and author, so that someone who loved author X’s last can, on scanning a table of new releases, suddenly say at a glance, ‘ah!  There’s author X’s latest!  I must have it immediately in hardcover!’   You’re aiming for something that is intrinsic to a larger strategy about an author’s, and perhaps even a whole imprint’s, readership and positioning.  Then there’s the added complication of late that a cover has to work digitally as well as in physical form.  Covers will float about on the internet as a form of viral promotion, will sit in the top left corner of an amazon page, have to look good at any size, at any distance, strike from afar but intrigue more close up.

Then consider that most covers will involve input from art directors, editors, artists, designers, marketing and publicity folk, senior publishers, agents, booksellers, not to mention those meddling bloody authors, all of whom may well have very different notions about what makes a cover work.

Starting to see why it’s a tricky business?

And why publishers are constantly tinkering with their approach and trying new treatments out in the hopes of improving and updating the profiles of their authors and tapping new veins of readership.  They say it’s when they stop recovering your books that you have to worry…

Now to the meat of the issue – Orbit have decided to re-release the undisputed fantasy masterworks Best Served Cold and The Heroes in trade paperback, and taken a radically different approach with the covers, and it’s one that I actually really like, but having done this a few times before I don’t doubt a lot of you won’t, and my curses and screams of tough shit upon you all.  Stand amazed:

Not to mention:

In your face.  I take absolutely all the credit I can possibly get for these, of course, but of equally course, I don’t deserve any of it, for they are the brain child and indeed work of the Art Director at Orbit, Lauren Panepinto and my US editor Devi Pillai, with Photographer Michael Frost and Illustrator/Propmaster Gene Mollica.  The treatment was basically for something reminiscent of modern sports photography – high contrast, high detail, high drama, fast shutter speed, frozen action.  A filmic approach, you might say, and I think they’ve totally nailed it.  Lauren’s post on the development, including a few steps in the process, can be found over on the Orbit blog.  Going back to our earlier discussion (alright, my monologue) about what a good cover needs to do, the reasons I like these:

They’re extremely bold and striking images which take no prisoners.  I can see them appealing to a committed reader of epic fantasy or of historical fiction or for that matter a more general reader of action-based books.  There’s nothing naff about them.  The content isn’t modern, but the way it’s presented very much is, and the lettering makes no compromises, it says, these might be books about then, but they’re very much for the now.  So I think they achieve that tricky balance of hitting a core and a wider audience, and also of telling you very clearly and accurately the type of read you’re getting while still setting out a really striking and individual visual style.  I can see this as an approach working across a whole series.  A brand, if you will.  And one that connects my books to the right type of readers.  Shit loads of them, preferably.  It’s a cohesive and coherent approach, and I also like the fact that it’s radically different to the UK approach – no doubt it gives the books a different flavour.

In summary they look like tough, edgy, very modern, kickass action fantasy for the discerning man or woman of today.  Which of course is what they are.  My advice?

Buy several.  I’m told the Trade Paperback of The Heroes will be available from October 2011, Best Served Cold from July 2012, but I shall keep y’all posted.

Now tell me I’m right about how great they are in the comments section.

Or, alright, moan about how Monza should have three scratches on her cheek instead of two…

Spot the Difference

March 17th, 2011 • 27 Comments

Between last year’s UK editions of Last Argument of Kings (left) and this year’s editions (right):

Your prize is a feeling of well-nigh insufferable smugness. 

Not for you, silly.  For me.

Before They are Hanged – Limited

February 23rd, 2011 • 16 Comments

My copies of Subterranean Press’ ultra-exclusive, tray-cased, leather-bound, lettered edition of The Blade Itself came through the mail yesterday, and let me tell you those guys can make a book.  I think it’s about the nicest book I own.  I could just sit there for hours and smell it.

But work on the limited edition of Before They are Hanged is also underway, and I thought I might share one of the interior illustrations with y’all, my favourite of those that artist Alexander Preuss has produced so far…

Heh.  Heh heh.  It’s a strange and sometimes frustrating experience, letting an artist loose on your work, because you’ll rarely see something that you feel really encapsulates your vision (which, after all, you rarely have a clear idea of yourself), and generally you have to allow them to interpret and put their own spin on the material.  Otherwise what’s the point?  Sometimes you look at what comes back and don’t necessarily feel it sums up the mood and tone of your work at all.  But occasionally you feel moved – even a little awed – to have provided the starting point for something so frakking cool.  Incidentally, Alexander’s concept art for this one is here:

Which ain’t exactly bad of itself.  The other rough that I’ve seen looks pretty darned promising too.  You can order copies of Before They are Hanged here, although at the moment they’re not taking orders from anyone who doesn’t already own The Blade Itself limited (which I’m afraid to say sold out prior to publication.  Actually, come to think of it, I’m delighted to say it).

In other news, The Heroes has sadly dropped from the UK Hardcover Bestseller list after three weeks in the top 10, mixing it up with the likes of James Patterson, Jo Nesbo, Clive Cussler, Dean Koontz.  That’s mainstream, my friends, and a testament to the hard work put in by folks in every part of my publisher.  Still need convincing to buy it?  There’s  a nice in depth review from Niall Alexander over at Strange Horizons:

“In short: Joe Abercrombie is a lean, mean, killing machine, and The Heroes is his best yet. Smarter, funnier, and harder than The First Law, more considered than Best Served Cold by a great, gory swathe, miss this one and heads could very well roll.”

And I’m talking about the book, among other things, on the first edition of Orbit’s new podcast.  Apologies for the slightly dodgy line.  And any of my dodgy lines.  Phone interviews can be difficult, and you don’t always get your point across quite as you’d like to.  I also seem to have a strange habit of talking in an incoherent rush, then pausing in odd places to gather my breath, before babbling off again.  It doesn’t sound like that in my head, honest.  Still, here it is.  If you prefer your interviews in written form, there’s another over at Total Sci-Fi.

The Valley of Osrung

November 27th, 2010 • 23 Comments

Having acquired an axe for the foreground, the next element we needed in our cover for The Heroes was the background.  The all-important map.

I seem to have acquired a reputation in fantasy circles as some kind of anti-map guy.  Occasionally I’ll read posts here or there about how much I hate maps, as though maps are a paramilitary organisation you’re either with or against, a holy cause you must support or oppose.  Probably it’s because there’s no map in The First Law, like you usually get in that there epic fantasy stuff.  But my position on maps is actually a lot more nuanced than all that.

Because I love me a good map, I do.  Man, I love them.  I used to spend hours poring over maps of Middle Earth, and the Dragonlance World, and Middenheim, and Titan, and Harn, and, and, and…  The bits of the roleplaying supplements with the maps in were always my favourite bits.  And I used to spend hours imitating them.  Sat there happily with my A2 pad and my coloured pencils, scratching unconvincing fantasy lands from my imagination, shading all the mountains, doing every tree in the forests, getting the river-lines oh-so curly-wurly.  Then I’d get really irritated with when I started doing the lettering and it came out all wrong and I had to put tipex on and ruin the whole thing.  Happy days.  When I visit the Vatican (which I do as often as my busy schedule will allow, of course) it’s bollocks to the Sistine Chapel, you’ll find me in the Gallery of Maps, with my nose an inch from the plaster and a big grin on my face.  Yes, indeed, I love me a good map.  And perhaps it’s because I love me a good map so much, that I hate me a shit map so much.

I don’t want it to be there just because it’s expected to be there, like the ill-fitting uniform on a draftee who’d far rather be at home.  I love maps that are useful, relevant, executed with artistic skill and used in inventive ways to enhance the whole feel of a book.  I don’t love maps that are pointless, ill thought-out and lazy in conception and execution, sitting limp and helpless on a fly-leaf.

Anyway, The Heroes, as you may well know by now, is the story of a single battle, the vast majority of the action taking place in one valley over three days.  A good understanding of the geography, and the positions of the units when the action gets underway, is pretty important.  It therefore occurred early on that a useful thing to have would be a map of said valley, very small scale compared to the world-spanning parchments you often see in epic fantasy.  It furthermore occurred that it would be good to update it at the start of each part of the book (so each day of the battle) with the positions of the units involved in the fighting – a convention probably very familiar to wargamers and readers of military history but not necessarily fantasy novels (although the overlap may well not be small, I will concede).

We may talk later on about the addition of the units, but first of all we needed to get a version of the battlefield without any units on it.  That’d come in the first part since, er, before the battle starts the units aren’t there yet, but it would also be modified for the later maps.  My own effort at the valley without units looked a little something like this:

Hard to improve on that artistically, you would have thought, right?  But map-meister Dave Senior took it away and, to his credit, was able to add a couple of minor stylistic touches:

Did you spot the difference?  That’s right, the names are in black on his map, on mine they’re in red.  Seriously, though, we were totally blown away by the richness and level of detail, and also by the sense of place he’d created, which I thought was spot on, without my having really specified it in any great detail.  The fields, the herds of sheep, the ripples in the ground were all things he took initiative on, but seemed totally fitting.  It actually helped me get a better sense of place when I was going back through and working on some of the settings and descriptions.  A couple of details to add that are relevant in the story, a couple of tweaks here and there, and he inked that version to produce this one:

Which probably looks pretty similar from a distance, but believe me, you go close up on that bad boy, you can smell the detail.  Have a look at the marshes.  Have a look at the forests.  Have a look at the buildings in Osrung.  You can actually see the mill-house and the guard towers, the little town square.  Look at the dry stone walls around The Heroes.  You can see the individual rocks.  Now that’s a map.

Here Comes a Chopper

November 16th, 2010 • 15 Comments

The concept for the cover of The Heroes was a development of the one for Best Served Cold (no way!).  So weapon, meet bloody map, bloody map, meet weapon.  But having done a sword for Best Served Cold,we needed to move into fresh pastures, and since The Heroes is set in the North, where men are men, chests are hairy, wood is plentiful and steel expensive and battle is a way of life, what could have been more appropriate to adorn its cover than an axe, proud tool of war and tree cutting throughout the ages.  But what manner of axe, was the question, for the variations are legion.

Well I’ll tell you what manner of axe.  I wanted it to have an exaggerated ”bearded” profile reminiscent of saxon and viking war axes, well-suited to fighting in shield walls, which is something close to the traditional style of battle in the North.  Above all I wanted it to look like a real weapon.  I didn’t want it to be ye olde decorative fantasee warre axe.  I wanted it to look like something that really could smash your head in and ask for seconds.  Having been given roughly that brief, and a few photos for guidance, Didier Graffet came back with this sketch:

Which was pretty much there already, really.  It was perhaps a little more elaborate than I’d originally had in mind, which had been for something really simple, brutal and workmanlike, as much wood-axe as war-axe.  But after thinking about it a bit I realised that if it was going to be writ large across front, spine and back of a book it needed a certain level of visual interest on blade and haft, not just a big expanse of blank wood and steel.  And the overall effect was undeniably still of something businesslike .  So we asked Didier to go ahead and colour that one, with just a longer chain on the haft for wrist looping and:

Wow.  Click on it, go on.  The closer you look, the more detail you get.  This one was apparently done digitally, as opposed to the sword for Best Served Cold which was an honest-to-goodness actual painting on board (which I actually have under my desk waiting to be framed), but you can still see the “brushwork” when you get close enough.  As with the sword for Best Served Cold, it has a kind of hyper-real quality – almost photo-realistic, and yet with an extra level of style.  Could one ask to be maimed by a better axe?  I don’t think so…

The Heroes – Final Cover

November 11th, 2010 • 31 Comments

We have a final UK cover for The Heroes, and it looks something like this:

Or, in even more spectacular stunning wraparound-o-vision, this:

Isn’t she lovely?  Click on it to see the detail.  CLICK ON IT.  The main addition is that units have been added – the Northmen wore red, the Union blue – transforming this workaday map of an unimportant valley in the middle of nowhere into a rendering of the positions on the morning of the second day at the Battle of Osrung.  Can you smell the excitement?  Or indeed the horse excrement, bloating corpses and metal filings?  For those not entirely unfamiliar with maps of unit dispositions it immediately gives the thing a different flavour.  But from a strictly cover art standpoint I really like the way that it has huge impact from a distance, but the closer you look at it the more you see, and the more questions come up, enticing one to pick it up and seek within for the answers.  And who’s that cheeky young man on the left with the magnificent head of hair?  Look inside, his enigmatic twisting of the lip seems to say, and for £14.99 sterling I will spin you a tale of knights, wizards, princesses, chivalree and derring-do.  And axes.

Artwork is by the award-winning team that brought you such classics as the cover to Best Served Cold - Dave Senior on map duty, Didier Graffet provided the axe, and Laura Brett married the two together, did the design work, and provided that vital spatter, all briefed and co-ordinated by my editor Gillian Redfearn.  Stay tuned, because over the next couple of weeks I’m going to be taking a closer look at how the various elements came to be and were united into this magnificent whole…

Like it?  Want one of your own?  In just 77 days we’ll be giving them away FREE with every UK hardcover of The Heroes.  You can pre-order yours now from those lovely people at amazon or waterstones, for 50% off.  Half price.  £7.50.  You’re killing me here!

Blade Itself Limited Edition Cover

July 26th, 2010 • 19 Comments

It’s been a while getting there, but I’m delighted to unveil the cover for Subterranean Press’s limited edition of The Blade Itself:

Cover art by Alex Preuss, who has also provided endsheets and several colour plates for the inside.  No doubt it will be bound and set to Subterranean’s usual astronomically high standards.  The leather-bound lettered editions are all sold out, but if you’re interested you can still order the signed and numbered hardcover here.  They should be shipping later in the year.  I’ll let you know when I get a precise date…

The Heroes Rough UK Cover

July 12th, 2010 • 23 Comments

Take THIS.

The first rough version of the UK cover of The Heroes.  As with Best Served Cold, it’s a collaborative effort.  The map is by Dave Senior from my original scrawl.  The axe is by Didier Graffet.  The design is by Laura Brett.  All co-ordinated by the incomparable Gillian Redfearn, of course.  Top class work from all four, as before.  As with Best Served Cold, it’ll wrap all the way round the book as well, will be all textured and shiny and debossed and all that good stuff.  Still a lot to be done to it, in the addition of detail and, probably, some blood, but I think it communicates the general idea pretty well already, don’t you?

When we’ve got a final version I’ll be posting that, of course, along with the wraparound, and I’ll probably go into some more detail about the development of the different elements, but for now I shall merely mention in passing, as I shall be doing frequently over the next few months, that you can pre-order this slab of parchmenty goodness HERE.  I urge you to do so.  Go on, order two.

GO ON.

Bleed me a River

March 29th, 2010 • 35 Comments

Orbit US have posted the provisional cover art for the US Hardcover of The Heroes.  Cover your face now, lest you be sprayed with gore.

 

Art by Steve Stone, design by the blood-thirsty Lauren Panepinto.  There may be a bit of tinkering in due course, most particularly with the map, which the sharp-eyed among you may note has been purloined from Best Served Cold.  A new map from map-meister Dave Senior, which will feature on the UK cover also, shall replace it in due course.  There’s also a synopsis, though twasn’t written by me, so I wouldn’t take it TOO seriously.  Probably only slightly more seriously than if it had been written by me.  I should point out this is to kind of form a sort of set with the controversial US Hardcover to Best Served Cold.  The MMP approach, as well as the UK cover, will be different.

In related news, rejoice, for the internet wunderkinds over at Orbit US have dabbled in the dark arts in order to restore the vast majority of missing old comments to this very blog right here.  Yes, all your old rumination, adulation and downright bile is restored.  Only a few posts are missing their comments, most notably the eighty or so frothing outrage at the new cover to Before They are Hanged not long ago.  That’s a damn shame.  But you can make up for it right now by frothing with outrage about this latest cover.  Go on, you know you want to.

In unrelated news, Best Served Cold has been named as SFFWorld’s favourite book of 2009.  And is third on SFSite’s reader’s choices of 2009.  Jeff Vandermeer has a comprehensive review of his best fantasy of 2009 over at Locus Online, in which Best Served Cold gets a mention alongside Richard Morgan’s Steel Remains and David Anthony Durham’s The Other Lands in the “Not your grandmother’s heroic fantasy” section.  Aidan at Dribble of Ink had a more ambivalent opinion :

“Relentless, but ultimately frustrating, Best Served Cold showcases Abercrombie’s growth as a writer amid his difficult-to-appreciate decisions as a storyteller.”

Ultimately a frustrating review, then, which showcases Aidan’s growth as a writer amid his difficult-to-appreciate decisions as a reviewer. A ha ha. Never gets old.  But who cares what they think?  Did you like Best Served Cold?  If so, you have but a couple of days left to vote for it on the longlist of the David Gemmell Legend Award .  See what I did there?  Smooth, huh?  The publisher told me to do it!  Honest!  They put a fucking GUN to my head.

Interview with the Artist

February 16th, 2010 • 36 Comments

Not so very long ago a decision was made at the highest levels of the windowless spiked citadel of steel and adamantite that houses Orion publishing. No, not to invade Gondor and impose a second darkness upon the world, but that an alternative set of covers for the First Law featuring some of the characters from the books might a) appeal more to and attract more interest from our sinister allies in the book trade, b) stimulate new interest in the series simply by a new presentation, and, c) potentially draw a readership who might so far not have picked the books up because they just somehow didn’t look like their kind of thing. Parchment-haters, maybe.

The artist given the unenviable mission of contending with my pedantic and ungrateful readers was none other than Chris McGrath, whose gritty, dark and realistic style seemed to me a good fit for the books. Out of the considerable goodness of his heart, he has volunteered to come upon this blog and answer my questions, so, without further ado:


- You’ve been given a commission for a cover, and you’re more or less staring at a blank screen. What next?

Hey Joe, Thanks for having me on your blog.

Well, first I’ll go over the notes that I get from the publisher and see what comes to mind. Sometimes I’ll get an idea right away and jump into the sketch phase and sometimes I’m left scratching my head with no idea at all. When that happens I basically start looking through my movie and art book collection to get some kind of idea or direction to go in. Then I usually end up doing a ton of sketches driving myself crazy until I feel I’ve got one that is good or inspiring. At that point I show the art director my sketches, they choose one, then it’s on to a final.

I work from a combo of reference and making stuff up. A lot like the guys who do concept work for movies and games.

- How much guidance do you tend to get from art directors, editors, or writers as to what they want on a cover, and how seriously do you take it? Does your heart sink when they shirtily demand changes, or do you see that as an opportunity to reassess and improve the piece?

Every publisher is different and has their own rituals for getting a book out the door. Some give a lot of guidance and some give you a lot of room and freedom. I’ve noticed that quite often, the bigger the author the more art direction I get. In the case with the First Law Trilogy, the publisher had some compositional guidelines for their layout and text design that I had to follow, but other than that I had a lot of breathing room. Sometimes I’ll try to push things my way a little if I feel something isn’t working right, and usually the art directors are ok with it. But then sometimes after marketing takes a look more changes and guidelines can be set. Sometimes things get reverted back to what they wanted to begin with or sometimes they want things changed in a very different way. When that happens it can be good or bad.

My heart does sink when I’m asked to make a change that I feel is incorrect or technically wrong. It’s ok to push things in a technical sense a little but at a certain point it just looks like the artist doesn’t know what he or she is doing. So, sometimes when I see something on the shelf by an artist that I know is good but has a cover that just looks wacky, I know it’s probably not their fault and was forced into it by marketing or something.

- Do you always/ever read the books?

I do read some of the books, and….surprise!….it’s usually long after I’ve done the cover. These days things move much faster and quite often the book isn’t even finished when I get a commission. The publisher likes to get an image up on Amazon as soon as they can to start the hype. It’s like that with a lot of best sellers.

As with your series, I only got a brief breakdown of the characters and a little bit of the setting.

- What’s the method? Are you working purely on computer these days or are you still messing with that coloured goo – what do they call it? Paint?

In the beginning of my career I worked in oils. When I was in school ( very early 90s) there was no photoshop or computer classes. But now I work in Photoshop like most people in the industry. My method is still the same though as when I was doing them in oil. The rules of painting and drawing still apply. I can tell when a digital artist hasn’t had any traditional art classes.


- One of my readers complained that he doesn’t like photographs of real people on the front of a book, but prefers paintings. Clearly he’s insane. But within his madness lurks a grain of truth, because there is a photorealistic quality about your work. Is that a deliberate choice, or something that’s developed over time?

My work in oil and photoshop looks similar. I’m trained as a traditional realist painter because that was my interest. I love the old masters and their methods and wanted to do work like that. But yes, my work in oil was also very “photo” realistic. You can see a sample here, an old painting from 1996 that I did. I had the guy surrounded by alien captors but they looked pretty silly so I cropped them out on my site.

At a certain point I decided to go digital because it was way more convenient and much much faster. Plus it prints much better and the publisher can work on it right away.

- I think on the most recent cover I notice something in the background not entirely dissimilar to the Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome (don’t test me on my fortifications). So I imagine you sometimes use photographic elements and tinker with and build upon them. Does that apply to the characters too? Do you use real-life models?

Yes. Like I mentioned earlier, it’s a combo of photo reference and making stuff up. Because I prefer realism and classical painting I use models and other elements. Sometimes I feel like I’m doing a movie casting when picking a model for the cover. Being an illustrator is very much like being a set director, especially when you are doing your own photography too.

But I do tweak features and poses and lighting and so on to they way I see fit. Almost always I have to do a lot of redrawing on the figure and adding a lot of stuff to the costumes. I work the same way on my backgrounds as a matte painter would. If anyone is interested to seeing this method you can just go to youtube and check that kind of thing out. I still watch lot of those videos to learn some new tricks.

- Clearly faces are a key element in any cover with a character. Do you start with a firm idea in mind of how you want a given figure to look, or is it something that emerges as you work? Are you sometimes surprised yourself by what comes out?

I agree. Faces for me tell a big story. Thats why most of my work is very portrait oriented. Faces and characters are what interests me most in a painting because there is so much going on in an expression and that fascination for me is endless.

I do start with an idea
that is given to me by the publisher and build on it. Usually what I’m given is basic stuff like, age, sex, hair color and length, clothing etc. And sometimes a brief description of the characters personality.
Also, yes at times things emerge as I work on a piece and the end result can surprise you. But I usually have a clear idea in mind for the characters. The backgrounds on the other hand can really change in surprising ways from start to finish.

- A cover consists of more than just your artwork – a designer will tinker with it to some degree, resize, add text, and so on. Are you ever disgusted by what happens to your work when it leaves the easel? And turning it around – have you ever felt a designer has improved on what you gave them?

I don’t want to get in any trouble so I’ll only say: yes and yes.


- Many of my sensitive readers seem upset that the characters aren’t uglier. I’ve tried to explain that a cover is a marketing tool, but they’re not hearing it, Chris. Do you want to give it a go? Why emphasise the glamorous aspects?

Ok. If there was more than one character on a cover I could have made Logen or Glokta uglier. For example if Jezal was on all three paired with either Logen or Glokta the ugliness thing would have worked because you still have an attractive hero type guy on the cover (your big movie star so to speak) to draw in the girls for the sex appeal and some macho type vibe for the guys.

When doing your covers it had been decided that each book would have only one character, and two of them are really ugly. So I thought to myself, in the grand view of the audience and people walking through a bookstore, who is going to pick up a book that has a figure on the cover showing off his missing half rotten teeth, a deformed eye and a skinny broken body? In the fine art world that could make an interesting painting but commercially for people who are looking for an adventure story to catch their eye on a shelf? The book company is in the business of selling books and attractive characters sell. I still tried to keep the vibe of the characters with the covers. Glokta and Logen are dangerous types so I still tried to get that across. I think everyone would have liked Logen better if I made his hair a bit shorter like it is in the book, but with the composition that I had worked out it would have looked flat. The piece needed something blowing to give a little more life to it. After all, it is this mountain type stetting. But I feel, that he still looks tough and dirty with nothing to lose.

With Glokta, I honed in on what he was in his past a bit more but still made him very bitter looking. He was a really handsome guy at one time so those elements will still be noticeable. Uneless he was horribly burned or something. So I hid his eye in shadow and kept his mouth closed and showed him in a light that for a brief second you could see what he once was. If he steps out of that, his deformities will become apparent.

Also I’d like to say, everyone will picture the characters differently in theirs heads from one another. If you give the same job to ten illustrators you will end up with ten completely different covers.

- Clearly, having worked on the First Law, the peak of your career is now behind you. But if there was one other book you could do a cover for, what would it be?

True. All of the other covers that I do now will be meaningless and boring, but if there was still one more that I can do that would have any meaning for me it would be the Elric series. I still love that character. I did do a concept piece of him on my site, but it would still be cool to do a narrative illustration of him.

- Thanks for your time, Chris, and for your hard work on the covers.

Thanks Joe, this was fun. And thanks to your fans for the feedback and critiques. They were fun to read.