Category Archive for ‘artwork’

Now, if it was key that the sword should hit the right note, it was much more key that the map should. Plus the map obviously had to reflect the facts of the text. So first of all, obviously, I had to provide my own childish scrawl which the artist, Dave Senior, would then art-i-fy and render beautiful and atmospheric. So the squared paper, retractable pencils and ultra-fine drawing pens were broken out with great relish. Styria looked something like this:

Apologies for the faint names, it’s a photocopy of the original.

I’ve talked a bit in the past about the pros and cons of maps in fantasy, and the reasons why there was no map in the First Law. I think the main thing I didn’t really discuss was that, if a map’s going to be included, I want it to be right. I want it to punch its weight, and look the part. I think maps in fantasy series are too often lazy. Lazy in terms of the authorial thought going into them, and lazy in terms of the artistic execution. A map is artwork, and if you’re going to include it, it needs to look authentic, it needs to help set the tone and create the atmosphere for the world as well as simply describe it, or it’s a wasted opportunity. Or worse, it’s just stuck in there to say – “this book is epic fantasy, like that Lord of the Rings that made everyone so much money. Man, I hope this makes money too.”

So I was very keen that a map should a) be accurate within reason, b) have artistic merit, and c) communicate something about the setting just in the way that it’s drawn. To feel part of the setting. This was extra-specially true given that it was going on the cover, rather than just sitting forlorn, split in half over the first two pages. So the brief that went to the artist, Dave Senior, who draws a lot of maps for Gollancz books, was to aim at something like the work of Gerardus Mercator, the famous 16th century Flemish cartographer. Work along these lines (those links are pretty hi-res, so they may be demanding of processing power, but they are pretty damn cool for those of us who like maps, which, let’s face it, is pretty much all of us).

Our map would obviously be a lot simpler than Mercator’s, ’cause there’s NO WAY I’m thinking up that many names, and monochrome so as not to distract too much from the other elements that make up the cover. I particularly liked the way the cities were depicted as little groups of buildings vaguely appropriate to the city in question. That was particularly apt for Best Served Cold, since the action is centred around six cities, each with its own feel, so I gave some descriptions of those key locations as well that some sense of them could be conveyed in miniature on the map.

Couple of weeks later a rough version came back, which honestly was already pretty exciting. The general look, the lettering especially, was spot in. It felt classy. It felt authentic. One could believe that it was a map that the characters in the book might consult. There was a bit of tinkering to do, plus a few extra details – towns and towers and what have you – were added to fill in some of the white spaces. Laura Brett, the designer, then applied her ye olde parchmenty effect and we ended up with this:

Click on it. CLICK ON IT. Delighted with the results, I need hardly say. Excellent work, Dave Senior. In fact we like it so much we might attempt to incorporate it as a background on the title pages to the parts, as well. I’ve always liked the idea of extending some artwork into the book proper, to give the whole thing a bit more visual identity and make the experience of reading it that little bit richer. We will see how that goes.

And here’s one more, of my original guide with the final artwork beside…

What’s that you say? You think my version has the greater artistic merit?

Yeah, right.

Burned and spattered papers, such as the ones on the First Law covers, are pretty much universal, but a sword has to hit the right note, especially since it’s meant to be the one the main character uses in the book. So it has to be the right era, and have the right feel. Since the feel for the book is kind of renaissance Italy-ish, more baroque than medieval, the brief we gave to Didier Graffet, a French artist who specialises in weaponry, was something roughly along these lines (and no doubt those of you interested by historical weaponry, which is, let’s face it, pretty much all of you, will now spend some time exploring that site), but possibly with a bit more heft to the blade. So it needed to look beautiful, but functional, without any fantastical flourishes. Steely, not gilded. It needed to look dangerous.

This was the first sketch we got back:

Which was already looking pretty good. We messed about with it a bit, shortened bits, lengthened bits, talked ricasso, knuckle-bow, quillons, and fore-ring, cause, you know, I talk fluent sword, and ended up with something actually pretty close to the original, though somewhat weightier and shorter in the blade, a bit less graceful and a bit more brutal:
Happy with that, it went back to be coloured, and damned if it didn’t turn up but a few hours later looking bloody brilliant:

Click on it. You know you want to. CLICK ON IT. Possibly you can’t entirely see it on this version, but the detail is amazing. It has that quality of accentuated reality that great graphic novel art has. Real, only more so. So my thanks to Didier Graffet. If you ever need a sword painted, I might just know a guy…

People occasionally ask me how much input authors have into the cover art, and I guess it varies greatly, but contractually, the publisher usually has no obligation to involve the author at all. For the vast majority of books, the cover will be the main selling tool at the publisher’s disposal, and that’s far too important an area to be left in the hands of an author who, let’s face it, most of the time doesn’t know shit about selling books. A lot less than their publisher does, anyway. And let’s not forget, this isn’t necessarily about making something pretty, or classy, or even relevant to the content of the book, this is about making something that the greatest number of people will want to buy.

This is particularly true with foreign rights deals. I’ve had no input whatsoever into the covers of any of the foreign editions of my books. Title changes either, for that matter. The feeling is, and I think it’s probably a wise one, that tastes and traditions vary from one territory to another, and the publishers in that territory, having bought the rights, are the people best equipped to know what’s going to sell.

Things are somewhat different in one’s home territory, however, and in general it behooves a publisher to at least run their ideas past an author (in much the same way as it behooves the author to give serious consideration to their editor’s recommendations about the content) if only because they will understand the language in which the author is complaining. Enjoying, as I do, a fantastically close relationship with my UK editor and publishers (Gollancz are like FAMILY, man, at least until I get a better offer), I am lucky enough to be consulted at every stage. It’s a collaborative effort. They provide the talent, I provide the complaints.

Now I’m not that brilliant on concept – I think that’s a very particular and valuable skill, one that you develop partly through long experience, and I don’t have it. Once I see something I get a feel for whether it’s right or not, and I get ideas for how to improve it (at least from my point of view), but I rarely have any sort of notion in advance of how I think a book should look. So when my editor Gillian picked my brains to see if I had any brilliant notions about what to do for the cover of Best Served Cold, I didn’t really. We considered going for a different look, since it’s not part of the same series. We floated a few things back and forth, but nothing was very compelling. Vague talk of graphic novels. Some mention of snow, and a female main character, but, you know, not that obvious, but, you know, not that un-obvious. I mean, a bit like that book what’s-it-called. Well, not like it, but not UN-like it. You know. You don’t know?

Simon Spanton, meanwhile, who is one of the two editorial directors at Gollancz, and who’d been responsible for the cover treatments for the First Law, was pretty intent on continuing that blood-spattered parchmenty theme, which had, after all, proved pretty successful. Possibly upgrading it by having a dagger stuck into it. I forget exactly whose idea it was to put a map on the parchments. Either Simon’s or Gillian’s, so let’s say mine. I have an idea we’d been discussing some recent impassioned chat from readers about maps in fantasy, and the absence of them from my books, so the issue was on our minds. Simon is, shall we say, not the greatest fan of the knee-jerk inclusion of maps in epic fantasy books, so possibly the idea of putting the map on the outside, then setting it on fire and spraying it with blood and vomit amused him. I think it was Gillian’s idea to go for a sword rather than a dagger, possibly because she was aware of the work of the artist in question. So there you have it. Map. Sword. Blood. Bingo.

Initially I was a bit worried, I must admit, about whether the map and the sword could be made to hit the right note, and whether they’d bind together into a consistent whole or just look like two entirely separate and mismatched bits of art dropped onto a page. In a sense it’s a much more complicated and specific idea than the more abstract covers for the previous three books had been. But I’d been pretty unconvinced by the cover treatment for The Blade Itself, when I first heard it (what, a load of burned paper? You sure that’s going to work?) but have ended up really liking it (and in the end barely making any changes at all, aside from incorporating the magic-circle thingy on the back) so I didn’t object this time around, having nothing much to offer as an alternative, and having learned the lesson that I don’t really know what I’m talking about when it comes to concepts for covers and I’m better off doing what I’m told, at least in the early stages. Later on I would have earth-shaking impacts on the design process, as we shall see over the coming week…