Thursday, September 3, 2009

I Fell into a Burning King of Fire


So seen here, is a promo illustration commissioned by my NYX partner-in-crime, Marjorie Liu, for, among other things, the July/August web exclusive over at chez Liu. Since it's now September, I think it's safe to post it here too.

The Fire King is the ninth book in Marjorie's acclaimed Dirk & Steele series. You can learn all about the book and how to get it here.

Based on the comments left on Marjorie's blog here, it sounds like a lot of readers thought this was the actual cover art for the book. Since it features typographical elements like a book cover, I guess I can understand the confusion. Still, wanna know how you can tell that there is no way that this is an actual book cover?

The title is bigger than the author's name. No publisher would ever let that happen.

I had a great time interpreting Marjorie's characters and flexing some character design muscles... haven't really designed anything I've illustrated since NYX, and even those were re-designs.

Marjorie and I are hatching plans for future collaborations related to the world of Dirk & Steele. Can't say much more than that for now, but watch this space (or Marjorie's blog) for more soon!

Marjorie and I at NYCC 09, with an auspicious portent looming over Marjorie's shoulder.

5 comments:

Madd said...

Weird. I was looking at the pic of you an Marjorie Liu and realized that it looks like Wolverine is about to sink his claws in to your head.

The Fire King illustration is awesome. Love the colors.

kalman said...

Logan and I have a lot of unresolved, erm, issues from back in the day. Leave it to that little bastard to sneak up when my back is turned and photobomb me...

And thank you!

Fogger said...

Actually, there's lots of books where the title is bigger than the author's name - happens all the time. A quick Amazon search yields several under just about every author's name I searched. :D

Tory said...

Actually Flogger, though you aren't wrong that there are books were the title is larger then authors name, this almost exclusively happens when the author is a relative unknown. And even then it's still unusual. In this case seeing as how Marjorie Liu is a quite well known, award wining writer and this is part of a successful series, it is safe to assume that her name would be bigger.

Fogger said...

Not so. While there's certainly a trend that way, if you check Amazon, you'll find that (as a for instance) a number of Stephen King's books feature the title bigger than his name. It'd be difficult to argue that he's an unknown or obscure writer. Likewise for Terry Pratchett.

I'm only saying that like any rule, it has exceptions.