I will be honest I love art!
And when I see a piece that I thought of come to fruition, it is one of
those weird great joys that I get.
This will be a look into the creation of one such piece of
art, the cover for The Awakened anthology that I am the lead on. Since I have an art director background I was
fortunate enough that the publisher let me work with the artist on the cover
and be my own art director. I say this
because it is true, not many people get that much influence over a cover. So thank you Neal Levin.
I have had this image in my head for years, even though this
book will not be available till early 2013.
I will not be going into how to find an artist, all I will
say is find one that you feel can do your image justice, make sure the artists
is comfortable with the medium and understands the project before you
start. I wanted a realistic feel to the
piece, so someone who could pull that off, examples of whom came to mind for me
were Frazetta, Ken Kelly, JP Targete, to name a few.
It starts out with a mental picture (for the untalented in
art such as myself this is as far as it gets).
From there I like to describe the image to the artist with as much
detail as needed but not too much because I really feel the more room you leave
for artists the more they will embrace the image and try and take it to the
next level.
So once Greg agreed to do the piece I sent him a description
like so:
Here is a description of the 2 humans:
Tangris
was a tall with shoulder length blonde hair male who hovered about 6'2"
and had a tough sinewy build. He was a good fighter and was going to be a
hunter as soon as he completed his rights to adulthood. He had a great
family and felt blessed he would be a hunter, that was a position of importance
to people in his village. He had an old sword and his father's bow which
he fletched arrows himself to save money. His best friend Fritien was
also of age to go through her rights of adulthood. Fritien was medium
build about 5'4" and quite well proportioned for a women of her size, she
had long flowing brown hair that always had some bit of nature holding it in
place, and wore frugal and smart clothing.
I envision all 3 maybe on a cliff side of a ledge looking straight out from the
cover, Tangris in chainmail shirt and leather armor and a leather bracer on his
left arm since he is a bow hunter, sword on his left side a quiver of arrows on
his right hip and holding the bow with a notched arrow at a downward angle but
able to move it up quickly so the bow will look like a smile not up and
down. Fritien will be looking out holding a long curled wooden staff, her
area is nature magic, so I would love her hair to have a circlet of flowers and
her "casting" a spell and we see bark raising from the ground to
appear like it will be a shield in front of her, and then Vigi the lion, he is
a standard lion but the IQ of a person, so he will also be patient but ready to
attack on a moment's notice. Background can be plains and one of the
features in the world is 2 moons so maybe both coming up on the left
side. With them being on a ridge that gives the publisher some room below
for authors names as well as the right side (no moons rising) and the top will
be the title.
I figured Tangris would have ranger type clothes and colors and Fritien, well
no idea so whatever colors work with the rest.
The 3rd character was a black lion.
And here was one of the first versions of what came to me via the internet.
Greg Opalinski
The Awakened ©Hal
Greenberg