Book Cover Illustrations

The movie script for Werewolves of New Idria by John Chadwell and Ron Shusett (writer/creator of the Alien franchise and Total Recall) continues to be in the running. As the script is submitted to potential buyers, clients, and actors, the concept art and illustrations created for the graphic novel version of the story continue to be of help in visualizing the movie project.

The above illustration is of a recently updated picture originally created as a cover for the graphic novel (but later rejected). It was updated with an eye toward augmenting the script with a new submission.

The first chapter of the novel can be read online at the Werewolves of New Idria web site.

And pictures for the upcoming graphic novel from Moonstone Books as well as concept illustrations for the novel and script can be viewed at my Werewolves of New Idria gallery.

The graphic novel can also be pre-ordered from Moonstone Books’ website.

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When not dreaming about werewolves and things that go bump in a movie script night, Duncan Long creates magazine and book illustrations for HarperCollins, Asimov Science Fiction Magazine, Pocket Books, ISFiC Press, ILEX, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. Long also creates concept art for movie scripts and movie productions as well as graphic novels. See more of his illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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One of last week’s projects.

This one is a “sketch” for Suzy Dingle’s upcoming YA novel. The various elements in the picture are painted digitally and are in their own layers so they can be rotated, re-sized, and so forth as needed.

It’s likely that the final book cover illustration will undergo some changes and it will be interesting to see how this initial design compares to the final book cover illustration.

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Duncan Long is a freelance magazine and book illustrator for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, ISFiC Press, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. See his book illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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One of last week’s projects consisted of a re-working of the cover of Lawrence P. White’s novel. The new book is actually two books combined into one, giving readers a two-fer when they buy it.

The original title (now the first half of the new book) was Spirit of Empire. That became the subtitle with the new title becoming Last of the Chosen.

More good reading.

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Duncan Long is a freelance magazine and book artist for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, ISFiC Press, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. See his book illustrations and graphic design at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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I’ve been using TinEye the last few days to discover folks using my artwork online without permission. This is a handy little search engine that compares similarities between pictures. If I find sites using my work without permission, I then write a take-down notice, ask the user to credit me for the artwork, or whatever seems appropriate.

I’ve also discovered TinEye is useful for finding sites that are reviewing books that have my illustrations on the cover or even inside the book. Some of these would likely never be otherwise discovered, especially in the case of foreign-language reviews.

Here’s the latest such review (for Sci-Fi Art Now from ILEX) which I found using TinEye: NCL Media Grupa.

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When not searching for pirated book illustrations with TinEye, Duncan Long creates artwork for book and magazine publishers. His artwork has appeared in publications by Ballistic Publishing, Paladin Press, HarperCollins, ILEX, PS Publishing, Delta Press, Pocket Books, ISFiC Press, and many small presses and self-publishing writers. You can find more of his book and magazine artwork at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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Ray K Alan has opened a new website that posts book reviews and author press releases for free.

Called “New Book Journal” it offers free posting of press releases for authors books, events, and announcements.

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Michael A. Stackpole looks at the news that Amazon.com sold more ebooks than print last year — and why that may mean that the golden age of self publishing is finally here.

Check it out: Amazon Sells More Ebooks Than Paperbacks.

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While it’s good to keep up on what the latest trends in book cover design and artwork may be (to avoid some of the cliches if nothing else), looking to the past for inspiration is often a fruitful exercise.

Penguin recently made this a little easier to do by posting a wonderful collection of the publisher’s vintage science fiction book covers. These are an amazing resource worth exploriing for both the book artist as well as those wanting to hire an illustrator to create a book cover for them.

And for those fans of science fiction, a few of these pictures (like covers for Harry Harrison, Frank Herbert, Geoffrey Hoyle, Philip K Dick and other novels) may even bring back some fond memories of days past when the chance discovery of a new author opened up new worlds of imagination.

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When not “borrowing” ideas from other book cover artists, Duncan Long creates book illustrations for publishers and self-publishing writers. Long has created book illustrations for HarperCollins, Pocket Books, ISFiC Press, and many other presses as well as numerous self-publishing writers. You can find more of his book illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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I got a nice little review and the display of some of my book illustrations and book artwork in the current issue of the ezine Writing Raw.

It’s a little disconcerting working with an online publication. With print it often takes months for something to be published. With an ezine, I send the pictures and my bio to them and a couple of days later – bang! There it is.

Like everything else, publishing is speeding up in amazing ways. Ebooks can of course be almost instantaneously placed into print. But POD (print on demand) makes print about as fast as electronic publications; the PDF for the book can be uploaded one day and the printed book delivered to the customer the next via overnight delivery.

Amazing times.

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When not marveling at the speed of the modern printing processes, Duncan Long makes his living as a book and magazine illustrator. His book artwork has appeared in publications from HarperCollins, PS Publishing, ILEX, Pocket Books, Fort Ross, ISFiC Press, and many other presses and self-publishing writers. You can find more of his book artwork and illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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Although I used to work in oil paints and pen and ink, today my illustrations (like the one above for George Blackburne’s The Reverse Multiplier Effect) are all digital, painted by pushing electrons across the screen with a Wacom digital tablet and pen.

The sizes of the paintings I create for book covers are generally not much larger than the final book cover will be – perhaps larger by a few inches to make getting the finer details into the picture a tad easier. But they’re not the huge oil paintings that book illustrators of the past made.

Of course on a computer screen they seem large and detailed. That’s because most monitors show picture at 72 to 96 dpi (dots per inch) while print is generally created at 300 dpi. So basically there’s three times as much detail as in the picture above with the “paintings” I create digitally. But they still aren’t as large as one would expect. And, yes, I do miss the smell of oil paints; can’t reproduce that by pushing electrons.

By way of software, about 99 percent of my work is on an ancient version of Corel PhotoPaint. I’ve customized the keyboard commands and also have pen gestures to pull up often-used plugins, so do most of my work without having to fiddle with sliders or icons to change brush size, change from one tool to the other, and so forth — much, much faster.

The other plus of PhotoPaint is that I’ve worked with the same version of the program (Version 8 — the newest is 14, I think) for about 10 years now, so I know the thing by heart (including some of the glitches that Corel never fixed) — I can almost think it and the picture is done.

Well — just about (ha).

But no fussing with the commands or program. Just free to think and explore as I work.

On the downside, PhotoPaint is not industry standard and not really designed as a painting tool. So for those starting out, I recommend Photoshop or Corel Painter just to avoid compatibility problems on projects — as well as to land a job since many employers require Photoshop know-how.

But for a rebellious freelancer like me… I wouldn’t work with anything else.

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When not crowing on his blog about the work he does, Duncan Long pushes electrons to create magazine and book illustrations and artwork for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, ISFiC Press, and many other presses and self-publishing authors. You can find more of his book illustrations and artwork at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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Got word that the graphic novel I illustrated Werewolves of New Idria is now available for pre-order from Moonstone Books.

Please note that the scheduled shipping date for this graphic novel is August 11, 2011.

You can also get a “sneak peak” at some of the pictures in the graphic novel (as well as the concept artwork I created for John Chadwell and Ron Shusett’s screenplay of the story — Shusett being the writer/creator of Alien franchise, writer of Total Recall, etc.). You can see these here at my Werewolves of New Idria gallery.

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Duncan Long is a freelance magazine and book illustrator for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, ISFiC Press, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. He also created the concept art and graphic novel illustrations for Werewolves of New Idria. See his book illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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