Happy 2009; 2008 in retrospect.
Wow, this poor journal is getting seriously neglected. So sad! I guess fanstuff has really slipped from my life, as has art. I'm cutting down how many covers I'm doing next year, so maybe I'll actually end up doing some art for myself in 2009. We'll see. If so I'll post it here :)
But what have I been up to in 2008? I edited my first anthology, and it got some very very nice reviews. I had 2 short stories and a novelette published, and some of them got very nice reviews as well. I finally placed Deconstruction with a publisher--yay!!--more on that as things solidify. I had some stories rejected. And I did covers. Lots and lots and lots of covers. Some of them are okay and some... not so much. If you wanna see 'em:
Click to view larger versions of the images
Ahh, the Personal Best covers. Honestly, I don't like any of the covers I've done in this series with the exception of the one that had the diver on it from last year. I don't know why it is that they always turn out so flat and stiff. Plus, this one had the decency to crash on me... repeatedly. I think I repainted elements in the picture four or five times, over and over, because it kept crashing. Not for lack of trying to save, too; when it crashed, it would corrupt the save file. Funfun.
This cover really surprised me by turning out OK. I hate landscape painting as I'm not really good at it but this worked out all right, I think. I liked the soft, almost radiant trees. The motorcycle is a photomanip that I painted over, so no compliments. I ran out of time, so I lamed out and cheated. Everything else is painted, though!
I'm not sure what's up with the colors, but it was sort of sick but fun to paint hands.
This is the first of the covers I did for the new Prism line of GLBT Young Adult fiction. I actually enjoy doing the YA book covers, I think because they gave me more fantasy ones. And this one was comic-book-y, which just tickled me pink. I met the author at Y-Con and she said her friends thought the main character looked like Harry Potter. Whoops. That was not intentional, at all.
This one's also for a line that I never seem to do good work for, not for lack of trying. I think because they always ask for architecture--buildings, settings, places. I'm REALLY only good at people. And even then if I'm tired, fuhgedaboutit. Not to mention I mixed up the due dates on this cover and another one, so ended up scrambling to get this one done in a pinch. The colors are terrifyingly saturated, the police car is just wonky and... I'm ashamed I turned this one in as it was, but I was out of time. Bleh!
Another YA cover. This one stumped me a little as the author was really open in her ideas, aka, didn't have a specific picture or pictoral elements in mind. Luckily, she really liked this!
The cover to an anthology I edited! I admit that was probably a bit incestuous, but the anthology idea came with the cover image idea, and was pitched that way. My thought was to combine a tom-of-finland-ish beefcake with the old pinup girls a la Gil Elvgren. Dunno if it worked, but it was fun. Unfortunately this cover gets both extremes in reactions--people seem to either love it or are horrified by it.
This one had to match the feel of a cover that I didn't do, which I thought was very nice. I didn't end up matching it. I just made something, um, weird. I'm not sure what to think about this one.
Um. Oh god. Wow. Maybe the less said about this one, the better. I don't really know what happened here. Seriously, I must have been tired. This cover makes me cry with shame.
I really wanted this to look as good as the cover for A Strange Place in Time 1, but it didn't work out that way. Again, I think I was really super crazy busy and exhausted at this time... Not that that is any excuse. But it is a big reason I asked to scale back this year.
...Then again I did manage to do something decent with the Flipped Fables cover. The colors scare me a little but I liked it otherwise. Well and of course, with both Torqued Tales and Flipped Fables, the characters are Jack and Sabin in my mind, so that makes everything better ;)
I really like how this cover came out. It is WEIRD. It's probably the most "multimedia" piece I've done, in that it was part collage (much of the animal texture was heavily modded photo then painted over), part manip, partly done in illustrator (the profiles), partly original painting (most of the human facial features).
I actually enjoyed painting this. The author sent a LOT of photo references, including a portrait s/he basically wanted me to riff off of. I tried to do a portrait in a similar style, from a different photo reference, and then added in a background.
God, this poor cover. I feel really bad for it. Basically it was the victim of "I have four covers all due on the same day" and also "Holy shit I can't paint sports things." It's more like a base-blocking than a finished painting. :/ (and before you think it's the author, I've actually done nice covers for SM's work before, ie the Need covers...)
Another one of the four "all due on the same day" covers, this one worked out a lot better because 1) the subject matter was much more my taste and 2) the style was my natural one, aka comic book-y.
This was the third of the four, and actually looks so-so because it was the first one I tackled. Also, it's a Between Friends cover that actually looks OK. YAY!
This cover was the last of the four and done in one day of OMG I'M SO SCREWED. It turned out... surprisingly okay. Probably because the concept had been working around in my brain for a while. That, and there wasn't really a background. Jesus I suck at backgrounds.
So that was it for the year. Phew. After that final run of four I wrote in and now I'm down to 8 for next year. That should be better.
How was your 2008? Gimme yer year in review, if you want? I'd love to hear about it! Or tell me what you'd like to see for 2009 :)
But what have I been up to in 2008? I edited my first anthology, and it got some very very nice reviews. I had 2 short stories and a novelette published, and some of them got very nice reviews as well. I finally placed Deconstruction with a publisher--yay!!--more on that as things solidify. I had some stories rejected. And I did covers. Lots and lots and lots of covers. Some of them are okay and some... not so much. If you wanna see 'em:
Click to view larger versions of the images
Ahh, the Personal Best covers. Honestly, I don't like any of the covers I've done in this series with the exception of the one that had the diver on it from last year. I don't know why it is that they always turn out so flat and stiff. Plus, this one had the decency to crash on me... repeatedly. I think I repainted elements in the picture four or five times, over and over, because it kept crashing. Not for lack of trying to save, too; when it crashed, it would corrupt the save file. Funfun.
This cover really surprised me by turning out OK. I hate landscape painting as I'm not really good at it but this worked out all right, I think. I liked the soft, almost radiant trees. The motorcycle is a photomanip that I painted over, so no compliments. I ran out of time, so I lamed out and cheated. Everything else is painted, though!
I'm not sure what's up with the colors, but it was sort of sick but fun to paint hands.
This is the first of the covers I did for the new Prism line of GLBT Young Adult fiction. I actually enjoy doing the YA book covers, I think because they gave me more fantasy ones. And this one was comic-book-y, which just tickled me pink. I met the author at Y-Con and she said her friends thought the main character looked like Harry Potter. Whoops. That was not intentional, at all.
This one's also for a line that I never seem to do good work for, not for lack of trying. I think because they always ask for architecture--buildings, settings, places. I'm REALLY only good at people. And even then if I'm tired, fuhgedaboutit. Not to mention I mixed up the due dates on this cover and another one, so ended up scrambling to get this one done in a pinch. The colors are terrifyingly saturated, the police car is just wonky and... I'm ashamed I turned this one in as it was, but I was out of time. Bleh!
Another YA cover. This one stumped me a little as the author was really open in her ideas, aka, didn't have a specific picture or pictoral elements in mind. Luckily, she really liked this!
The cover to an anthology I edited! I admit that was probably a bit incestuous, but the anthology idea came with the cover image idea, and was pitched that way. My thought was to combine a tom-of-finland-ish beefcake with the old pinup girls a la Gil Elvgren. Dunno if it worked, but it was fun. Unfortunately this cover gets both extremes in reactions--people seem to either love it or are horrified by it.
This one had to match the feel of a cover that I didn't do, which I thought was very nice. I didn't end up matching it. I just made something, um, weird. I'm not sure what to think about this one.
Um. Oh god. Wow. Maybe the less said about this one, the better. I don't really know what happened here. Seriously, I must have been tired. This cover makes me cry with shame.
I really wanted this to look as good as the cover for A Strange Place in Time 1, but it didn't work out that way. Again, I think I was really super crazy busy and exhausted at this time... Not that that is any excuse. But it is a big reason I asked to scale back this year.
...Then again I did manage to do something decent with the Flipped Fables cover. The colors scare me a little but I liked it otherwise. Well and of course, with both Torqued Tales and Flipped Fables, the characters are Jack and Sabin in my mind, so that makes everything better ;)
I really like how this cover came out. It is WEIRD. It's probably the most "multimedia" piece I've done, in that it was part collage (much of the animal texture was heavily modded photo then painted over), part manip, partly done in illustrator (the profiles), partly original painting (most of the human facial features).
I actually enjoyed painting this. The author sent a LOT of photo references, including a portrait s/he basically wanted me to riff off of. I tried to do a portrait in a similar style, from a different photo reference, and then added in a background.
God, this poor cover. I feel really bad for it. Basically it was the victim of "I have four covers all due on the same day" and also "Holy shit I can't paint sports things." It's more like a base-blocking than a finished painting. :/ (and before you think it's the author, I've actually done nice covers for SM's work before, ie the Need covers...)
Another one of the four "all due on the same day" covers, this one worked out a lot better because 1) the subject matter was much more my taste and 2) the style was my natural one, aka comic book-y.
This was the third of the four, and actually looks so-so because it was the first one I tackled. Also, it's a Between Friends cover that actually looks OK. YAY!
This cover was the last of the four and done in one day of OMG I'M SO SCREWED. It turned out... surprisingly okay. Probably because the concept had been working around in my brain for a while. That, and there wasn't really a background. Jesus I suck at backgrounds.
So that was it for the year. Phew. After that final run of four I wrote in and now I'm down to 8 for next year. That should be better.
How was your 2008? Gimme yer year in review, if you want? I'd love to hear about it! Or tell me what you'd like to see for 2009 :)