Cover Art for the books

[Rob B]

This may be off topic a bit, but this FANTASY section has a lot more traffic than the ART section.

This will be another mindless debate, but who do you people consider good artists; which artists do the best job on the covers of our beloved fantasy novels? Or who do you not like? Here are some artists that helped me to judge a book by its cover.

MICHAEL WHELAN--Probably the best now, and probably best ever. He has a wide range of great covers, and they almost always capture the feel of the book and characters--he did great covers for Tad Williams's books, first 2 covers of Robin Hobb's FARSEER and great artwork in THE GUNSLINGER by Stephen King.

STEPHEN YOULL--did the art for the Liveship Traders by Robin Hobb, and GRR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. His stuff comes alive right off of the cover.

KEITH PARKINSON--While I haven't read many of the books that he did covers for Terry Brooks and Terry Goodkind, his art is really amazing, he does some amazing realistic looking dragons. He also did some of the DEATHGATE covers for Weis and Hickman.

LARRY ELMORE--Original artist for DragonLance Chronicles and Legends . 'nuff said

[This message has been edited by FitzFlagg (edited November 21, 2000).]

 

[Pluvious]

Cover art is cool and all, but I never really noticed who was good or bad. Anyway, most writers have very little influence over the cover art, so, since I am an aspiring writer myself, I am anti-cover emphasis.

Plus the fact that many fantasy readers buy books simply because they find the cover interesting...which is all marketing and has nothing to do with the autor generally.

 

[Eventine]

Quite remarkable is the fact that Janny Wurts does her own covers (on the UK releases at least - I'm not sure about the US). The art is quite good - at least she knows she'll have a job if she quits being an author.

And I've never bought a book based on the cover

 

[FitzChivalry]

I never bought a book based on the cover either, but i was impressed with some covers although i don't really remember any names.
There is one artist called Boris that you forgot to mention that did the art for older science fiction and fantasy books like Orion by Ben Bova or The World of Tiers by Philip Jose Farmer.
Also i don't know who did the cover for The Cold Fire Trilogy by C.S. Friedman, but i liked it too.

 

[Cellandros]

Actually, Mike Whelan, perinial master of fantasy cover art is the one who did the covers for Coldfire trilogy. He's the best.

I also like Larry Elmore, Keith Parkinson, and too many more too list. I

 

[Rob B]

I don't know that the cover art convinced me to buy the book, but if I saw a catchy cover I would pick up the book, skim the first few pages and jacket description, and go from there.

Boris is really good too.

Pluvious--I am an aspiring writer as well, good luck! It is unfortunate that the writer does not have too much influence on the cover--the best example is Robert Jordan's WOT books. While the artwork is good--the characters are inconsistent throughout the books--the only things that seem to stay the same are the horses.

[This message has been edited by FitzFlagg (edited November 22, 2000).]

 

[Lani]

Well, as most of people here I didn't buy a book based on its cover, but sometimes covers are so misleading. It seems like lots of artists feel obligated to put some half-naked woman on it. I still try to figure out why.
Others just like to put something that doesn't suit the topic of a book or goes against descriptions in books. Well, artists probably don't have to read the book to make a cover, but I guess it would be nice if they sometimes at least checked with the book in settings.
Of course there are some good cover artists, but I have a feeling that bad ones dominate. Oh,well...

[This message has been edited by Lani (edited November 22, 2000).]

 

[FitzChivalry]

Heh, if i'd see a half-naked woman on the cover of a book i'd pick it up and check it, buy it or not depends on the story.
But it's a good commercial trick.

 

[Bardos]

My favourity artists are: Luis Royo (cover of "Rhapsody"), Keith Parkinson (covers of Shannara Series), Larry Elmore (cover of the Dragonlance Saga)

 

[Shadowen]

I have to say, I _really_ hate Darryl Sweet's work on the WOT series. Remember The Eye of the World? Moiraine covered in jewels and riding on some kind of strange dwarf mule, Lan with full body armour etc. The rest of the series was no better.

 

[drakon]

yeah i have to agree with you Shadowen.
my "favourite" is the smaller cuter version of Loial in The Great Hunt.

 

[Azurehero]

Okay, I noticed no one mentioned Mr. Sweet as their favorite cover illustrator.

AND RIGHTLY SO!!

Every cover for every book he's done is the same. Me and my friends will pick up a Pierce Anthony book and go, "Oh my GOD! What's Rand doing in this book?"

 

[Saruman]

I dunno but whoever did the cover to The Forgotten Realms book The Cormyr did an excellent job with that black dragon...

 

[Ravenlock]

Have any of you seen the new covers for the Shannara series? I thought that they were kind of cool. THey are just landscape for the most part from what I remember. I like it when the cover depicts somethings that happens in the book. Then you can try and figure out whcih part of the story it is. Are all of the WoT covers done by the same person? My least favorite was the one for the fifth one. THey are all just randomly standing in the city there isn't any point to it. I didn't really like the cover of the sixth one either, but I thought that the rest were all right.

 

[Rob B]

Ravenlock-I like the new Shannara covers, they are cool.

As for the WOT, yes they are all done by the same artist, Darrel K. Sweet. He does many covers for Tor's fantasy books and has been a bone of contention with many Wheel of Time fans for quite some time. Your opinion of him is shared by MANY WOT fans

 

[Sojourn]

Hmmm, no one mentioned Geoff Taylor. His artwork graces the covers of countless novels, namely Eddings' work, the latest re-release of LoTR, Feist's books and the books of a few more authors I can't remember. He's also a contributing artist for many of Games Workshop's product illustrations, and I'd say he's one of the better 'epic' illustrators out there. Just take a look at his 'sweeping-panaroma with strong central figures' or 'epic battle/war scene' covers and judge for yourself.

IMHO... ^_^

 

[FitzChivalry]

Hmm. i don't know who did the art for the serpentwar saga, i mean the art on the inside of the cover in some serpentwar editions... but i thought it was great.

 

[FitzChivalry]

Found his name, it's Daniel Horne, he did the cover for the riftwar books too and for some other series.