The story follows Jebi, a non-binary artist who lives in Hwaguk, a country that is living under the occupation of Razanei, a neighbouring nation who defeated their forces a decade before. I mean, what’s not exciting about that set up? Set in a fantasy land inspired by Korea under Japanese occupation, containing a mixture of magic and technology, and with a giant mechanical dragon on the front cover. I found DoFresh on Artstation (which is a go to when looking for SF and Fantasy artists) and particularly liked the way he’d combined a dinosaur with armour as well as his mech/robots in general so put him forward as a potential illustrator.Phoenix Extravagant by Yoon Ha Lee is a story that instantly jumped out at me. A bold graphic style with a phoenix emblem and my favourite, commissioning an illustrator to do an amazing painting of the dragon. An epic fantasy look, perhaps with a Korean magical artefact as an icon. I identified several different approaches which could work for this book. The next stage was to come up with a few rough comps to show David and the team at Rebellion. I had a rubber stamp made especially to get the right texture.
I thought this would be a great idea for Yoon Ha Lee’s author brand as it tied in perfectly with the ideas behind the cover. I noticed that a lot of woodblock prints and paintings I was looking at had the artist’s signature in a block/seal, which is called a “chop”. Illustrations for presentation only © the original artist. The narrow characters also allow Extravagant to be set at a decent size as it’s quite a long word. Extravagant set in a block sans serif to contrast and give a retro flavour that evokes old military propaganda posters. Phoenix in a dynamic ink brush script, representing Gyen and also giving an Asian feel. At a very early stage I came up with the idea of mixing typefaces to represent both sides. This allowed me to think about ways of representing both Gyen Jebi the artist and the occupation/empire on the cover. My process for Phoenix Extravagant started with visual research around East Asian painting and graphic design with a focus on military propaganda posters and ink paintings.
0 kommentar(er)
