Monday, January 10, 2005

On Art in Fantasy Novels...

Today I'm taking some time to think about the art I'm doing for my novel (and overall series... it's never to early to think about the future).

Cover Art: I'm very lucky because my father is a wildlife artist with 30 years of professional experience.

Here's a link to his commercial website.

He will be doing my cover, which is very exciting for me. The details are still being worked out as to the content so I won't describe it here since it might change, other than it will have the two main characters involved in some important event in the novel... facing down enemies of a fantastic nature more than likely.

In addition I am working on other artistic elements that will be leveraged in the work. For example, one of the main themes of the series is the interaction between the gods and man. The gods can choose to be born into the world as mortals, but with no memories of who they are. As events unfold they may learn of their true nature, but even then they are mortal. It's sort of a checks and balances relationship set up by the creator god Az to protect the physical plane of existence against the powers of his "Children."

In any case, there are 12 gods that the people of the world worship. I'm creating symbols for each of the gods that will appear in the book at the beginning of chapters, that sort of thing.

Next comes the map of the world. Caern is the setting for the fantasy series, and I have a map for it that I created in a wargame mapping program. I plan on doing a hand-drawn version of this map to include in the book (what fantasy series doesn't have a great map of the world?!).

Lastly comes some small drawings that I want to place in the book. I'm not a professional artist but I think I can get away with doing these myself... just pencil drawings of weapons, monsters, people, etc. that are important to the story.

As I get closer I will probably post some of these items here for review. I look forward to feedback that will help me make this first novel a success.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home