steampunk – Page 16 – { feuilleton }

Steampunk redux

The Steampunk design I created last year for Modofly (based on a formula by writer Jeff VanderMeer) is given a new lease of life with this colour version. Modofly produce decorated Moleskin books with a range of designs from some very talented artists. Previous graphics were laser-etched onto the boards but they’re now able to print in full colour which is obviously to everyone’s advantage. This is available now in two different book formats. And while we’re on the subject, a reminder of Dana Mattock’s incredible Steampunk Frankenstein casemod at Flickr. His photos of my Steampunk print are now posted.

I’m planning more designs for Modofly and would have had some ready now had the past few months not been so hectic. In a similar mode (as it were), I’m also planning some T-shirt designs for Kingstrike. More about these later.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Steampunk framed
• Steampunk Horror Shortcuts

Edward Judd, 1932–2009

Like the creations of the late Oliver Postgate, Edward Judd haunts my childhood imagination via the handful of very British science fiction and sf/horror movies he starred in during the 1960s. He did a great deal of acting before and after this—in the Seventies he was a very ubiquitous TV character actor—but it’s his run of genre films which remains notable. In these roles he was always the stalwart Everyman, usually with another older actor as co-star who supplies the requisite scientific explanations.

The first of these, The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961), was a Val Guest production which followed the success of Guest’s Quatermass films in visiting another space-born calamity upon the world, this time an unprecedented heatwave caused by nuclear tests which throw the earth off its orbit. The film opens with a Ballardesque view of the River Thames parched to a thin stream, and features some great shots later of Judd stumbling through an abandoned, dust-strewn capital. The location work in the Daily Express building on Fleet Street adds to the realism, as does a strong script and decent performances.

Continue reading “Edward Judd, 1932–2009”

Steampunk framed

Dana Mattocks wrote to me a month or so ago asking if he could have a print of my Steampunk picture to go in a frame on the wall beside his jaw-dropping Steampunk Frankenstein case-mod. I immediately agreed after seeing his photos. A single picture doesn’t do justice to the amount of work and detailing that’s gone into this project which makes most other steampunk craftings look distinctly lacklustre. See his Flickr pictures for a better look at its wood-and-brass lusciousness. What I didn’t expect was that the frame would be an equally impressive heavy-duty item. And I’m especially pleased to see the picture in there along with Colin Clive and Boris Karloff from the first Universal Frankenstein films. Thanks Dana!

I’ve been working on an updated version of the Steampunk pic for something special which I’ll announce here shortly. Meanwhile, if anyone else has one of my pictures in an impressive frame, send me a photo and I’ll feature it here.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Steampunk Horror Shortcuts
• Zeppelin vs. Pterodactyls

Designing Booklife

I created a cover design recently for Jeff VanderMeer‘s new novel, Finch, and shortly after completing that Jeff asked if I could put together some cover ideas for his forthcoming writer’s guide, Booklife, which Tachyon will be publishing later this year. Jeff is known as a fantasy writer but this book was intended to have a general appeal for any would-be or working writer. It also needed to look suitably contemporary and (possibly) reflect the discussion within which concerns the modern writer’s use of computers, the internet and social networks. Lastly, several lines of text needed to be placed on the cover without it looking confused or messy.

I agreed to this whilst busy with several other projects so the initial drafts were rather haphazard. (That’s my excuse, anyway.) The first version (above) came out of an idea to apply a kind of trompe l’oeil effect to the cover with a torn dustjacket and handwritten amendments. The red call-out/roundel highlights an important sub-section of the book. This was knocked up very quickly and, as well as not looking very contemporary, the title doesn’t look enough like gold blocking to be convincing. Jeff requested something more up-to-date.

Continue reading “Designing Booklife”

Finch

A new book cover design which I’m posting slightly ahead of time—it still needs a suitable blurb adding—since Jeff VanderMeer was eager to show it to his readers. You can see it bigger size here.

Finch is the third book in Jeff’s cycle of unique fantasy novels and stories about the city of Ambergris. This book shifts emphasis from the previous ones with a tone borrowed from crime/thriller fiction (but still set in the fungus- and squid-infested city) hence the gun outline and blood spatters. I keep being drawn back to Ambergris, having provided designs for the first volume, City of Saints and Madmen, and recently designed a new edition of Shriek: An Afterword.

Publisher: Underland Press, October 31, 2009, trade paper

Description: A noir thriller/visionary fantasy set in the failed state of Ambergris, 100 years after Shriek: An Afterword. The gray caps, mysterious underground inhabitants, have re-conquered Ambergris and put the city under martial law, disbanding House Hoegbotton, and controlling the human inhabitants with strange addictive drugs, internment in camps, and random acts of terror. The rebel resistance is scattered, and the gray caps are using human labor to build two strange towers. Against this backdrop, John Finch, who lives alone with a cat and a lizard, must solve an impossible double murder for his gray cap masters while trying to make contact with the rebels.

Nothing is as it seems as Finch and his disintegrating partner Wyte negotiate their way through a landscape of spies, rebels, and deception. Trapped by his job and the city, Finch is about to come face to face with a series of mysteries that will change him and Ambergris forever.

The cat and the lizard watch intently. Something is about to happen. And they both want to know: who is Finch, really?

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Steampunk Horror Shortcuts
• A cover for Mr. VanderMeer
• Pasticheur’s Addiction
• Fungal observations
• Shriek: The Movie
• Jeff on Bldgblog
• An announcement redux
• City of Saints and Madmen