Category: Art
- Wendy Chan - November 22nd, 2010
Hello all. As some of you may have read in a earlier post, I’m the new junior designer here at Orbit Books/Yen Press. I’ve been immersed in the world of book cover design here and — three months into working for the Orbit art department I’ve already been invited to a photo shoot?! How cool is that? This is my first photo shoot ever if you don’t count that embarrassing yearbook photo that my college made me do… Read the rest of this entry »
by Wendy Chan • 2 Comments • Posted in: Art, Covers, Orbit US
- Kirk Benshoff - November 16th, 2010
The Edinburgh Dead by Brian Ruckley hits shelves August 2011. This project was exceptionally interesting for me. The book is a historical fantasy that takes place in 1827 Edinburgh, Scotland. It follows an officer of the recently formed city police who is on the trail of undead hounds, emptied graves, brutal murders, and a criminal underclass involved with the darkest of powers.
The photo illustration, by Larry Rostant, is a beautiful and haunting cinematic look into the story. We made the main character front and center with very specific details hinting at the plot without being campy or having to spoon feed the audience. Read the rest of this entry »
by Kirk Benshoff • 2 Comments • Posted in: Art, Covers, Orbit UK, Orbit US, Uncategorized
- Lauren Panepinto - November 9th, 2010
And the winner is…….Bountiless! The contest really did come down to the wire between Bountiless and Breathless, but in the end, Boba Fett took the prize. And speaking of prize, we were SO impressed with the quality of the contestants, and the feverish commenting, that we decided to award the winner with a $100 gift certificate to Clockwork Couture, helmed by none other than expert panelist and Alexia model, Donna Ricci.
Mr. Fett, please contact me at lauren (dot) panepinto (at) hbgusa (dot) com and we’ll work out the details on the prize.
Of course, ’tis true that Boba Fett is a bit of a tough fit for the world of the Parasol Protectorate, but I think it can work if you think of it like this: If you forget that this is a reimagining of Boba Fett, and just take the costume fresh and just on Steampunk merit, it is absolutely a fine piece of craftsmanship and design. And a hell of a lot of manpower. And I think there is definitely room in the Parasol Protectorate for a helmeted bounty hunter.
And, you know, besides that, it’s freaking Boba Fett in Steampunk. That’s awesome.
You can find out more about the mysterious Mr. Fett at his facebook page. I hear he is available for parties!
Truth be told, all of our finalists — and really all of the contestants — embodied the best aspect of Steampunk: they had fun. I love Steampunk and other “retrofuturism” because you really can bring so much of yourself to it, and look awesome doing it. Your own background, look, culture, your own nerdy obsessions. And it takes chutzpah to dress up on a day not related to Halloween, even for a convention where a whole lot of other people are dressed up too. I applaud the entire Parasol Protectorate Class of 2010. And get working on your costumes again for next year!
by Lauren Panepinto • 7 Comments • Posted in: Art, Contests, Conventions, Covers, Orbit US, Uncategorized
- Lauren Panepinto - November 8th, 2010
Hey remember this picture? Way back in August I was working on a photo shoot with photographer Laura Hanifin for a cover, and I had to share a picture of one of the crazy props we were using that day. Yes, it was a real live—well, actually, dead—octopus, which Laura had dyed with food coloring in a ziplock bag in her fridge. Yes, I am the one holding it, and yes, it was really really slimy.
I got a lot of questions about it, especially after I made the shot my facebook profile pic, but I just couldn’t tell you guys what the images were for until we were ready to launch the cover, just in case it didn’t work out. But luckily it worked out even better than we had hoped, and launch day is finally here, and I actually have not one but two covers to show you. The shoot went so well that we’ve already used photos on two covers, and we’ve still got more good images left. I’m hoping that will make it up to Laura that her apartment stunk like dead fish for at least a month afterwards. (Sorry!)
A few people DID guess that the octopus was standing in for some kind of intergalactic space creature, and I can finally say that you are correct…and the mind that thought up that creature is none other than Philip Palmer, author of Debatable Space, Red Claw, Version 43, and now…Hell Ship! Read the rest of this entry »
by Lauren Panepinto • 1 Comment • Posted in: Art, Covers, Orbit UK, Orbit US
- Lauren Panepinto - November 5th, 2010
photo by Jeffery Scott
Parasol Protectorate fans, I have a special treat for you today. I have the face of Alexia Tarabotti herself, Donna Ricci, here to give some critiques and comments on the Parasol Protectorate cover finalists. We’ve talked about Donna’s role in the covers before, but I love talking about what a great team-up these covers have been. Donna is the proprietress of Clockwork Couture, which, in my opinion, has the best selection of Steampunk clothing and accessories on the web. She’s also a professional model, a writer on Steampunk fashion, and a champion of beasts great and small. I can’t think of a more fitting person to be our Alexia. And as an extra treat, I’m going to post the images below that became our Parasol Protectorate covers, before and after I did all the photoshop magic to them. You’ll see Donna needs very little retouching!
Before I hand it over, however, I just want to update you guys. We’re going to leave voting open over the whole weekend, and I’ll be tallying votes sometime Monday (after my first coffee, at least) and announcing the winner. N0w remember guys, one vote per email address please…that means you, mom-of-Doubtless! haha.
Ok, here’s the original images of Donna, next to the cover images of without the text, as a bit of a cover “evolution” shot:
original photo by Derek Caballero, background image from Getty Images
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by Lauren Panepinto • 3 Comments • Posted in: Art, Contests, Covers, Orbit US
- Lauren Panepinto - November 4th, 2010
Ay-leen's photo by Anna Fischer
The competition is fierce and the comments are flying over at the finalist round for the Parasol Protectorate cover contest, and I thought it would be fun to have some “Steampunk Experts” give us some professional opinions of the finalists ensembles and posing. First up is the Ay-leen the Peacemaker, mistress of the fabulous blog Beyond Victoriana, who also contributes to other blogs and projects on retro-futurism. Beyond Victoriana focuses on multiculturalism in Steampunk and retro-futurism, and just won a Last Drink Bird Head Award.
I really enjoy reading Ay-leen’s essays because it’s good to remember that although there is a huge Victorian Age element to Steampunk, that does not mean that it has to be solely Victorian England. I’m really into the idea that a lot of the fun of retro-futurism is that you can really make it personal in style, and that can include your own family and cultural heritage. For example, check out the costume in the Careless cover below, which kind of has an awesome eastern/turkish element to it.
Anyway, enough about what I think…on to Ayleen’s comments…
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by Lauren Panepinto • Post a Comment • Posted in: Art, Contests, Covers, Orbit US
- Lauren Panepinto - November 3rd, 2010
Voting is now open for the finals of the Parasol Protectorate cover contest! The competition was fierce, and after 5 rounds of intense voting, here are your finalists. You’ll have all this week to vote. On Monday I will again tally the votes and name the winner and new Team Captain for the Parasol Protectorate Class of 2010…or is that 1910?
You might notice there are 6 finalists, and that’s because there was a bit of suspicious voting in Round One. So let me make the rules clear once more. Only vote once. I can see your email addresses so if there are two votes coming from the same account (that aren’t an obvious computer error) then all the votes from that account will be disqualified. To vote, please state clearly in the comments which cover (by title) you are voting for. DON’T say “#3″ and don’t say you’re stuck between Sugarless and Hairless, because neither will count as a vote. DO feel free to applaud, praise, or heckle other finalists in the comments as well. DO feel free to vote for yourself. And most of all DO remember that you are voting on the person’s costume and pose. And poise. Not the title, cover layout, or background, which were all entirely my doing.
Over the next few days I will have some Steampunk and fashion experts weighing in on the finalists, so stay tuned! The finalist covers are after the jump…
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by Lauren Panepinto • 190 Comments • Posted in: Art, Contests, Covers, Orbit US, Uncategorized
- Lauren Panepinto - November 1st, 2010
The cover art Daniel Dociu did for Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey is so cool that we wanted to make it a wallpaper immediately (for our own use!) so why not share, right? I love the movement and action in the piece and I think that it says a lot about what kind of epic space opera reading experience you’re in for with Leviathan Wakes.
Hopefully these wallpapers can tide you over until the release in June 2011! Enjoy the fabulous illustration by Daniel Dociu, type by Kirk Behshoff, wallpaper layouts by Wendy Chan.
Enjoy the art fullsize and all the usual downloadable sizes after the jump… Read the rest of this entry »
by Lauren Panepinto • Post a Comment • Posted in: Art, Covers, Orbit UK, Orbit US, Wallpaper
- Kirk Benshoff - November 1st, 2010
Leviathan Wakes is by James S.A. Corey, which is the pen name of Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. This behemoth is hitting stores May 2011. What an awesome project. We’re talking space opera, big ships, interstellar travel, secrets, conspiracies, and high adventure. Once I got my hands on it the gears started turning full tilt.
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by Kirk Benshoff • 2 Comments • Posted in: Covers, New Titles, Orbit UK, Orbit US
- Lauren Panepinto - November 1st, 2010
As the Creative Director of Orbit US, I am very happy to make some announcements and introductions. And maybe a few explanations, with a small peek behind the curtain at a book publishing art department. SFF readers are pretty opinionated about covers, which is awesome, so I’m guessing you’d like to know a little bit more about how an art dept. is set up.
When Orbit first launched here in the US three years ago, the cover design was handled by the fabulous Art Directors and Designers of the Little Brown Art Department (some of their awesome work can be pointed out in my very first ever Orbit blog post here.) Orbit’s first year in the US went so swimmingly that it jumped out from under the Little Brown umbrella and teamed up with Yen Press to become it’s own division of Hachette Books. It then needed its own art department and I was hired to get that moving. Kirk Behshoff, who you will meet in a minute, had already been handling the cover art for Yen Press while it was a part of Little Brown Young Readers, and thank goodness he came over with Yen or I might have lost my mind those first few weeks. So long story short, the last two years were a lot of wonderful covers mixed with panic and a lot of late nights, because let me tell you, two people for two imprints is a bit of an insane workload. And because of the time crunch, I stuck mostly to Orbit and Kirk stuck mostly to Yen.
But now we are three! As of the beginning of September, we have welcomed Wendy Chan onto the Orbit/Yen team as a Junior Designer. With Wendy’s help we’ve been able to start to mix it up a bit. I did my very first Yen covers (for the High School of the Dead series) and Kirk is handling some Orbit covers—the first of which, Leviathan Wakes, is launching today! Very exciting.
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by Lauren Panepinto • 1 Comment • Posted in: Art, Orbit US
Hello all. As some of you may have read in a earlier post, I’m the new junior designer here at Orbit Books/Yen Press. I’ve been immersed in the world of book cover design here and — three months into working for the Orbit art department I’ve already been invited to a photo shoot?! How cool is that? This is my first photo shoot ever if you don’t count that embarrassing yearbook photo that my college made me do… Read the rest of this entry »
