Sunday, November 14, 2010

Cover Me!

I have been contributing art to the gaming magazine Fight On! for a while now -- I think it's been two years -- but so far it's been internal illustrations only. I'd never even considered doing a cover, in part because I'd not been struck by a good idea for one, and also because I didn't consider myself in the same league as the usual cover artists:





They're working on the eleventh issue right now, and the editor put out an open call for a cover image. The subject is to be something from the Runequest game, and one of the suggestions was the Crimson Bat, which is a kind of massive chiropteran Godzilla, flapping about and destroying everything in its path.

I can imagine it would be quite easy to come up with an epic bit of fantasy artwork to illustrate such a creature, but another quite different image sprang to mind instead. As I mentioned above, I've not had an idea push its way forward like that before, so I've gone with it.

While all the pieces above are very good, they're also all of a stock, illustrative fantasy style, and what occurred to me was something more "designy", iconic and abstract:


What I have in mind for the title and text is for it to go somewhere near the bottom, and to be plain white and unobtrusive, making the cover as a whole rather stark and simple.

The editor is unsure. He likes the image, but thinks the readership might respond in the negative, so he's not sure about making it the cover.

What do you think?

4 comments:

  1. I like it! It really does break the mold when it comes to the standard cover styles (based on what you've posted here), so I can understand the hesitancy.

    But I think it's a brilliant piece of design.

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  2. Echoing Paul, I have to say "excellent piece of design". It's certainly very different from what has gone before and moving the logo etc might be the deal-breaker. Depends how brave they are!

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  3. DO IT. It's great.

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  4. I love it!
    I don't think FO! needs to have any cover txt, for reals yo. It's sold pod and pdf's, no one is going to be looking at that @ their local store going "what is it?" (and even if they did, it's obscure and killer looking). Putting txt on that would just get in the way.

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