Showing posts with label Design. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Design. Show all posts

Saturday, February 1, 2014

Ken Kelly Cover Art - Spawn of Dyscrasia (3 of 3)

Spawn of Dyscrasia Cover
Spawn of Dyscrasia is due out this year (2014), and this is the last of three posts detailing the evolution of its cover:
  1. Cover Concept (link): The first post covers the goal & concept art
  2. Cover Art (link): The second post chronicles the interactions with master fantasy artist Ken Kelly (from rough sketches to final painting) to yield the key illustration
  3. Cover Design (you are here): This covers the actual design (title placing, masking of the illustration, and overlaid fire).  We have to take the illustration (left) and dress it up for the book (lead design below, on right).

Ken Kelly's portrait reflects a scene from the book and features many important elements that make implicit promises to readers (i.e. expect magic, undead characters); key accessories from the flag to Lysis's sword are accurately presented too.  With that firm foundation in place, we turn to making a cover out of it.  My wife Heidi Lindberg (a trained Interior Designer with a critical eye for all things, and a knack for brutally honest feedback) stepped in to advise on Font & Word placement.  Thanks to her and the folks over in the Sword & Sorcery Group on Goodreads who provided input on some initial compositions (Comp A & B).  Most liked the title being on the bottom (Comp B), and the idea of  the characters standing on a hill of debris resonated with the piece.


Applying some masking layers in Photoshop made (a) the spirit cat easier to see, (b) the edges of the flame more clear, and (c) the rebalancing of the composition (the green flames of the cat tail stretch down into the title to compensate for its "top-heavy" head).  Helen's red-tattoo and the red-blood on Lysis's sword are amplified to match the red in the title and fire.   This is not the final cover design for Spawn of Dyscrasia, but it is fairly close since it covers the below success criteria:
  • Sword & Sorcery:  It promises to deliver "swords/action" and "magic" while revealing a scene from the book
  • Character Focus: The portraiture promises to develop a sorceress and skeletal warrior
  • Internet Appeal: It is easy to recognize as a small icon (as shown via Goodreads or Amazon)
  • Dyscrasia Fiction Look: It continues the look of the first novel, Lords of Dyscrasia (see below side-by-side).  This is important to build the brand of Dyscrasia Fiction.

Small version discernable

Lords and Spawn of Dyscrasia Covers
Consistent with Colors/Composition for Dyscrasia Fiction
Lead Cover Design for Spawn of Dyscrasia (due out in 2014)



Ken Kelly Cover Art - Spawn of Dyscrasia (2 of 3)

Spawn of Dyscrasia Cover
Spawn of Dyscrasia is due out this year, and this is the second in the mini-series describing the cover art, illustrated by master fantasy artist Ken Kelly:
  1. Cover Concept (link)The first post covers the goal & concept art
  2. Cover Art (you are here): This second post chronicles the interactions with master fantasy artist Ken Kelly (from rough sketches to final painting) to yield the key illustration
  3. Cover Design (link) : the last covers the actual design (title placing, masking of the illustration, and overlaid fire)
Ken Kelly - Rogues and Spawn of Dyscrasia

Feedback to First Rough:

The goal was to reapply the composition of Ken Kelly's "Rogues" (that graced the cover of Robert Adam's first Horseclan's novel).  The preceding post (add link) discusses the color selections and design choices.

With this information Ken Kelly set to making some Rough Sketches.  The first featured just Helen, who appeared too zombie-like and her long-nails were accentuated enough but needed to be turned over (to look like she was controlling the fire).  This opportunity allowed me to reinforce that Helen was the living character...and the warrior was the undead one.

Rough Sketches - Spawn of Dyscrasia by Ken Kelly

 Feedback to Second Rough:

I proposed a modified mock-up by placing the Roughs into Powerpoint, and indicated things to tweak (red) and items to keep (blue): 

1.Warrior is undeadà A skeleton…with crown of horns…and fiery aura (cover his biceps, perhaps, since he has no flesh?)
2.He has only 1 sword (his sheath looks like a second)
3.Warriors general stance = cool, no need to change
4.Lady’s stance= cool, no need to change
5.Shadows/lighting = awesome
6.Fire à eventually to be colored with spirits
7.Pennant à I like this shaft… can we add a flag? 

Lastly, Helen needed to be directly connected to the fire, and I wanted to ensure there was one representative Spirit presented within the flames.  Drawing from Ken Kelly's awesome gallery, I lifted one of his great cats (from Feline Warrior), and worked it into another mock-up.  He cautioned that this would throw off the balance of the composition (becoming top heavy).  I agreed, but asked him to work it in anyway; this motivated the "green wisps of ether" special effects to be added later in the Cover Design (post 3 of the series) to compensate.

Ken Kelly - Feline Warrior and Rough Sketch for Spawn

Canvas and Oil Work:

At this point, Ken Kelly began work on a real canvas with his oil paints. I received digital photos periodically:

Ken Kelly - Painting Spawn of Dyscrasia

 The cat turns green and Helen receives a "black-eye."
Ken Kelly - Painting Spawn of Dyscrasia

As the piece approached its end, I had concerns about the bubbles and requested Helen's eye-tattoo to be red, which were easily changed.  Ken Kelly originally titled this "Magic Soldier" but changed it to "Spawn of Dyscrasia" to match the forthcoming book.

Spawn of Dyscrasia - (c) Ken Kelly 2013
Overall, the process consumed a solid nine months. That was partly due to me not specifying a steadfast deadline, taking second-chair to higher priority clients who had real deadlines (i.e. KISS).  Also, given the nature of oil paints, each layer remains wet for some time; so each iteration (paint a layer/get feedback) consumes a few days at best.  Despite this being a commission, our deal was such that he maintained the original.  In addition to the high-resolution photographs created by Ken's photographer, I did order a signed Giclée print (a print on canvas). The last in this blog series captures how the Cover Design incorporated this Cover Art.


Ken Kelly Cover Art - Spawn of Dyscrasia (1 of 3)


Spawn of Dyscrasia Cover
Spawn of Dyscrasia is due out this year (2014), and this three post mini-series describes the cover design process, featuring a custom illustration by master fantasy artist Ken Kelly:
  1. Cover Concept (you are here): This first post covers the goal & concept art
  2. Cover Art (link): The second post chronicles the interactions with master fantasy artist Ken Kelly (from rough sketches to final painting) to yield the key illustration
  3. Cover Design (link) : The last covers the actual design (title placing, masking of the illustration, and overlaid fire)

1) Character Portraits

Whereas its predecessor Lords of Dyscrasia (2011) is a set of narrative tales stressing plot & action with varying points of view, Spawn of Dyscrasia (2014) follows the development of a single character, Seer Helen. The sequel's cover had to embody this new emphasis on characterization, so an appropriate portraiture composition was targeted.  It may seem strange to intentionally pose characters passively on the cover, but there are plenty of precedents. For example, Larry Elmore did this effectively with the original Dragon Lance trilogy (authored by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, including: Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Dragons of Winter Night, and Dragons of Spring Dawning).  Also, Frank Frazetta did this effectively with his Deathdealer character:
Elmore Dragon Lance covers

Frazetta's Death Dealer

These portraits promise books with developed characters...without showing any action.  Ken Kelly has many of these, like his Death's End and Rogue's illustrations (the latter was the cover to the first Horseclan's book by Robert Adams).  In Spawn of Dyscrasia, the character Helen does not develop in isolation; rather she teams with the protagonist from the first book, the skeletal Lord Lysis (who is featured on the cover of Lords of Dyscrasia).  Hence, Ken Kelly's "Rogues" stood out as a good example of what I wanted: a female and male duo portrayed against a fiery scene. 
Ken Kelly Death's End and Rogues

I reached out to Ken Kelly via his website's commission section.  In short, pricing depends on the canvas size and amount of detail; other factors to be arranged are timing and who owns the original.  Here is a snippet from his commission page:
"Fees start at $750. for a single figure, oil painted on 10x14" illustration board with a very simple background.  Fees rise from there depending on what needs to be added and size of original." (copied 2013 from Ken Kelly's commission webpage)
After arranging the commission for two key figures (which prompted a 22"x28" canvas), I sent him the concept art of the two characters to be placed in a similar composition in his Rogues piece.  

Lord Lysis Concept Art

I had drawn Lysis many times already for the illustrated Lords of Dyscrasia, so it was easy to assemble a board to describe his undead state and unique sword, Ferrus Eviscamir.  I also scoured Ken Kelly's vast gallery of oil paintings to identify what Lysis may look like from a painting already made by Ken; Path of Fright worked well for this, since Ken painted some eerie skeletal gargoyles.

Lord Lysis concept board

Ken Kelly's Path of Fright

Helen Concept Art:

Helen had been written about well enough in the draft transcript, but I had never drawn her.  Some internet browsing followed by Photoshopping (namely color inversion) enabled a concept board. Another search of Ken Kelly's library led me to his KISS Girl #5 pencil.  Here Ken's experience painting for the band KISS worked well (he has painted their albums and guitars), since Helen required a tribal tattoo around her left eye.  Helen is not the KISS girl, but referencing her was useful.
 Helen Concept Board

Ken Kelly's KISS Girl

Lighting & Character "Color"

Lastly, a board explained that any fire would simultaneously (a) provide lighting and (b) represent the sorcery that Helen and Lord Lysis command. The magic system in Dyscrasia Fiction motivated the need to have "grayscale" characters: Helen and Lysis can see, feed upon, and cast magic via creative energy (represented by ethereal fire).  Spellcasters are mostly colorless (monochrome); they feed on color, draining it from enemies and sacrificed art, so perform sorcery.
Ether Fire Burning Elder

Monday, March 25, 2013

Mushinkan Aikido Dojo - Website and Logo Design


An earlier post mentioned how my artistic understanding of human anatomy was being augmented by my learning of Aikido. Aikido focuses on throwing/rolling rather than hitting/kicking, and helps one learn self-defense as well as how to fall correctly.  My family and I have been attending Domaschko Sensei's Mushinkan Aikido dojo for a few years now (Liberty Township, Ohio; classes held at Martin Martial Arts).  

This posts highlights how my wife Heidi and I helped with Mushinkan's new logo and website design.  Firstly, Heidi designed a logo that roughly represents Domashko Sensei's face as a Samurai-like mask; she employed Adobe Illustrator to realize her vision (note her blog: DESIGNlab link) and Domaschko Sensei approved. Armed with Sensei's brochures and photos..and Heidi's Logo...I designed a blog-site for the Dojohttp://ohioaikido.com/

Looking to learn self-defense with an aim to subdue/control an attacker rather than inflict harm? Live near Cincinnati? This is the place.  








Saturday, December 8, 2012

Holiday Card 2012



This card wishes all a safe holiday season, and a happy new year that follows. Thanks to Heidi, Erin, and Connor who always support my compulsive card-making behavior.  All previous cards can be found on http://lindbergcrafts.blogspot.com/.  


Fairie Theme

I was obviously inspired by faeries this year.  The connection stemmed from the foundation of many religious celebrations at year's end: the Winter Solstice.  Since the longest night of the year marks the Solstice, it seemed appropriate the have the moon take center stage.  The first concept was to have an evergreen forest decorated with lights.  These lights were to be revealed as faeries migrating from the moon, resting on branches.  Originally they would be carrying lanterns.

The Process

I confess, I started this in September since my Oct. & Nov. schedules were packed.  I was motivated to finish early Nov. to ensure I could get the hardcopies printed in time for an early Dec. publishing.  This process seems to only get more complex each year...ugh.  Anyway, here is how the card was produced:

Initial Sketches

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Tweaking the Faerie(s)

During the making of this, the concept of a parade of faeries was reduced to a single one. The remaining faerie took on a glow of her own, so she hardly required a lantern.  She assumed a reflective, praying position (she had to be doing something).  Incidentally, this design change sparked a discussion with our resident mythologist (Erin) who claimed the simplification might still be perceived as odd: she argued everyone knows that angels prayed, but fairies were not known to be religious (as praying would imply).  I agree, but angels and faeries are not far removed from each other on the spectrum of spiritual, winged things.  Besides, if I were a moon  faerie, I would consider coming to earth on the longest night of the year just to look backward, reflect from whence I came, and prepare to tackle the future.  In any event, no offense intended (recall an angel did get center stage in last year's card (link)).

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Winning the Argument

How do you engage a resident mythologist?  Win her over to your way of thinking? Well, you may just up the ante a bit, perhaps incorporate her into the work.  Game on, daughter!  
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3D? 

There is a lot of detail in there, so let's zoom in. Some people see a 3D effect now:  if you first focus on resolve the black silhouette of the treesthen she should appear to float in your peripheral vision (at least on computer screens).  Tell me if this works for you (might be easier to see in the final version at top of this blog).
fairyZoom

Font and Graphics

Heidi helped me with finding a good font.  She found a great one that was easy to read and amplified the moon shape with wondrous circles in the "G","g", and "S".
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Print Prep: RGB to CMYK conversion

Cripes, almost done.  I worked in RGB (Red, Green, Blue) space originally since I am familiar with it and my photos/scans were generated that way (RGB being the format of the raw data from scientific/digital cameras and the display on monitors); however, the printing industry still prefers CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key--a.k.a. "black") since those "channels" represent the common ink colors used in printers.  Color transformations are nontrivial, so it is best to work this out yourself rather than rely on some automatic/uncontrolled process if you are going to submit your art for hardcopy printing.

Black (K): Converting in Photoshop appears easy (most try the IMAGE>MODE options), but this doesn't work well (EDIT>CONVERT TO PROFILE allows for more control).  Generally, the RGB colors are converted to CMY_ alright, but the K channel is neglected.  Blacks turn to grays, and the general intensity of the image becomes muted.  To correct this, a program like Illustrator or InDesign is needed (geared toward making actual prints).  I used illustrator to EXPORT my file into a new *.PSD after I had changed the PREFERENCES>APPEARANCE OF BLACK to export RICH BLACK.


(CMY): Then back in Photoshop, to tweak the colors I applied a few ADJUSTMENT layers, I reversibly tweaked the colors "by eye" until they approximated the RGB look.

Saturday, October 13, 2012

Ancient Ohio Trail - Real and Virtual Visits of Earthworks

Seip mound Ohio - For scale, see children

Explore Ancient Ohio

Ancient, Native American Indian architecture, made of earth, saturates the Ohio Valley.  Much of it was obliterated by settlers (admittedly, many of the earth mounds were covered in trees and were overlooked; others were removed without respect unfortunately).  That said, much remains. My family visits these sites ~annually; I and wanted to share some of the resources we use to plan day trips for: hiking, exploration, appreciation of past cultures, and inspiration...at places like:

Ancient Ohio Trail - Online Travel Guide (click!) 

Interactive Tour Guides Link
Many sites have small museums associated with them (Sun Watch and Fort Ancient have very nice ones).  Many others have been incorporated into rest stops (i.e. Seip Mound), parks, or are hidden in plain site within our cities.

Planning a trip was once complex, but now online mapping and conservation efforts have provided interactive tools.  The Ancient Ohio trail tool works great.  Follow the link and select a city or road you want to travel and it will mark out the earthworks and museums. Not sure which ones to go to?  Then check out the below virtual tours enabled in part by the CERHAS (The Center for the Electronic Reconstruction of Historical and Archaeological Sites (CERHAS), part of the University of Cincinnati's Design and Archictecture program.  These are beautiful, realistic tours that have been integrated into the museums.  Check portions of them from their YouTube.com channel:

Youtube Channel Ancient Ohio Trail (click!) 

Sunday, June 3, 2012

Escapist allegory versus implicit preaching: Can you still enjoy a fantasy novel knowing it derived from established religion?

This month’s (June 2012) CNN article “The Gospel of Stephen King” reveals that his horror novels are influenced heavily by Christianity!  Oh the terror!  This equally terrifies readers (often wanting an escape from enjoying established answers to all things spiritual) and religious folk (how can a Satanic horror novel be representative of our good Savior’s message?).  From the article, King explains:
The Bible is filled with terror: demons, ghosts, floods wiping out mankind and the rising of the dead.  “Good horror examines the struggle between good and evil,” he says. “The Bible is the history of that struggle. “The Bible is in many ways the ultimate horror novel.”

This evokes the common rite of passage that fiction readers experience:

  1. Young adults read an introductory horror-fantasy novel from a famous author (J.R.R.Tolkien, C.S.Lewis, Stephen King, Anne Rice,…)
  2. They enjoy the first novel, so they consume more from the same author.  
  3. They discover that their favorite books are religious allegories (eh gods!)
  4. They cope with being disillusioned/betrayed

Niel Gaimen summarized this phenomenon well with his twelve year old boy character, Richard Grey, in his short story One Life Furnished with Early Moorcock within the anthology Michael Moorcock's Elric: Tales of the White Wolf:
Richard had, however, finally given up (with, it must be admitted, a little regret) his belief in Narnia.  From the age of six -- for half his life-- he had believed devoutly in all things Narnian; until last year, rereading The Voyage of The Dawn Treader for perhaps the hundredth time, it had occurred to him that the transformation of the unpleasant Eustace Scrub into a dragon, and his subsequent conversion to belief in Aslan the lion, was terribly similar to the conversion of St. Paul on the road to Damascus; if his blindness were a dragon...
This having occurred to him, Richard found correspondences everywhere, too many to be simple coincidence.
Richard put away the Narnia nooks, convinced, sadly, that they were allegory; that an author (whom he trusted) had been attempting to slip something past him.  He had had the same disgust with the Professor Challenger stories when the bull-necked old professor became a convert to Spiritualism; it was not that Richard had any problems believing in ghosts -- Richard beleved, with no problems or contradictions, in everything -- but Conan Doyle was preaching, and it showed through the words.  Richard was young, and innocent in his fashion, and believed that authors should be trusted, that there should be nothing hidden beneath the surface of a story.

Like it or not, speculative fiction is influenced by religion

One the one hand, all fantasy plots have been explored ad nauseum (read Fraser’s The Golden Bough).  After all, a great deal of literature has accumulated since man began recording stories (history).  Every combination of soap opera between man, beast, self, god, etc. has been covered, so much so, that any myth/story can be considered derivative of a prior (i.e. replaced) myth or religious allegory.  Myths even maintain a consistent story structure across beliefs, time, geographies (Campbell’s Monomyth).  In fact, most religions have cannibalized each other's stories (yes, most of the stories in the Bible are derived from pre-existing myths…oh the terror!).

The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion
(Sir James George Frazer,1854–1941)
The Hero with a Thousand Faces ( by mono-myth espouser Joseph Campbell )

So whether writers/readers/religious-folk want to acknowledge it or not, fantasy, myths, and religious tales are derivative.

The funny mystery is why that revelation should horrify readers and religious folk alike.  If you enjoyed fiction derived from stories that humanity continues to enjoy retelling, who cares to whom credit is assigned for its creation?  Will the act of reading religious-based fiction automatically indoctrinate atheists into some  institution they have an aversion to?  If you enjoy the Bible, does the fact that many of the stories in the Old and New Testaments evolved from "myths" bother you?  This philosophical mess is what drives readers away from trying to figure "it" all out.  Can we not enjoy stories, escape from assigning credit or truth to any of it?  Going back to Niel Gaimen's thoughts expressed through his character Richard Grey, we are reminded why many of us desire innocent escapism:
At least the Elric stories were honest.  There was nothing going on beneath the surface there: Elric was the etiolated prince of a dead race, burning with self-pity, clutching Stormbringer, his dark-bladed broadsword – a blade which sang for lives, which ate human souls and which gave their strength to the doomed and weakened albino.

Monday, November 21, 2011

Holiday Card 2011

A cherub sits atop the earth’s atmosphere, ushering in the new sun with a trumpet call!  Happy new year!
Another year, another card; historic Holidays Cards (from 1998 on) are display here!

Style: Wanted to learn how to paint with PhotoShop (as per artist/microscopist Vince Kamp and ImagineFX workflows (link); Credits: I acknowledge awesome critiques from my wife and daughter; their input was tremendous.  It helps to produce art with a few crafty, artistic folks around (who are not afraid to tell you how to improve).

Here was the process of generating this year’s card:

1) Conception: The initial goal was to incorporate bears into a Holiday theme.  This originated as tribute to our family vacation to the Shenandoah park (having encountered ~5 bears in 3 separate instances).  The only conceivable way of including a bear was as a toy…so the vision of an angel cradling a teddy bear while nestled in pillows emerged…with a morning sun encroaching!  Between sessions at the recent Society of Rheology convention in Cleveland, I  doodled the first composition of a cherub holding a teddy bear.
Society of Rheology Oct 2011 - initial vision of card-2

2) Sketches and Story: When I got home, I used pencil and paper to draw a few cherubs.  The story emerging now was a set of three angels, one awake and hailing the new sun to the annoyance of the other two slumbering cherubs.
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3) Digitization: Next, These sketches were scanned into Photoshop with some pictures of my local West Chester skyline.  Each was granted a dedicated layer and “blocked in” separately with a mask. Wanted to target a Renaissance mood, and experimented with gaudy frames (later eliminated).
3-workflow-composition layers

During SoR we had visited the Cleveland History Museum and its Planetarium; there I learned about the coolest constellation ever, which I tried to incorporate: Microscopium.  This idea was eliminated since the constellation is usually in the South not the East and I required the sun rising behind the angels.
4-workflow- pallette and blocking in

4) Painting: I used a Wacom Bamboo tablet (I can’t rationalize ordering a Cintiq until I learn some more!).  So I began painting over my sketch as if it were a blank coloring book entry.  Using the swatch panel as an artist’s palette works well.  Still need to learn how to use Brush Presets, since I was constantly iterating between masking, painting, dodging/burning/ etc.  Notice how two angels were discarded--one was enough.
  5-workflow swatches as a pallette

5) Adjustment layers: Finally, I added a few adjustment layers to tone down the saturation (i.e. the left image below looked like a neon bar sign) and warmify/cool selected masked regions (to put a translucent brilliance into the clouds); oh yeah, a few carefully placed lens flares helped with the sun’s brilliance. Erin instructed me to turn the eyes from green to blue to match the sky; Heidi had me remove some “mystical smoke” that was blowing from the trumpet…which I thought was cool until I saw her point that it made the angel look like a pipe-smoking crack baby.  Cripes!  A near miss!

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6) Final steps! A decorative border and text are added in Illustrator (then tweaked in PS), and woo-hoo! we arrive at the final card (at top)!  Need to order prints from mpix.com !