TOR UK have just drawn to a close their very cool in-depth, behind-the-scenes, play-by-play accounts of how a cover is born, from the point of view of a publishing house’s Art Department. The book they chose to follow was Orbit’s VERY COOL Shadowdance series by David Dalglish and the covers are just beautiful. Below is the summary video and a link for you to check the entire series of posts out… It’s incredible to see just how much work was put into these.
Geoff Matthews
Julia Kitvaria Sarene
That’s a lot of work to make a very generic cover.
Professional cover art is a lot more work than a lot of people think it is. It’s interesting seeing all the steps that go into a cover and how many people are involved, even if you don’t like the finished product. 🙂
It is very generic, but then generic sells it seems 😉 The Assassin’s Creed style covers and The Hooded Men are still leading to fantasy fans pulling our their wallets, so I guess you can argue the publishers would be fools not to use that. Certainly, if I see a cool hooded man cover I at least read the blurb 😉
I must admit the cover half attracted me and half repelled me. On the one hand I love anything about assassins but then on the other I do hate that publishers might use that fact against me by making a cover look cool but then you can hardly blame them. I loved Brent Week’s Night Angel trilogy when it came out but I must admit I hated the first cover for it. I’ve recently bought Mr Dalglish’s ADoC and look forward to reading it. I’ve recently been reading Jon Sprunk’s Shadow Son and although its been a good read the cover (another generic hooded man cover) really did put me off at first. I got the feeling it was just pandering to the hooded cover fans out there like myself . . . and it was . . . and it worked . . . and it was a good read.