Cover Art Part 1
- By Pete Worrall
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- 22 Jun, 2018
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A stick of broccoli
The ole saying of ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ is absolutely true. Sadly, it’s something we all do, which is why it’s essential to have a cover design that is provocative, eye catching, thought-provoking and well put together. It’s easier said than done unless you’re a wealthy author who can hand all of the cover art process to a professional artist and say, “it’s about goblins, vampires and shape-shifting unicorns, away you go.” A month later you may have a dozen or so designs to pick and choose from, what a luxury that would be. From a personal perspective, I can’t really afford the services of a professional cover designer. Actually, let me rephrase that; I could probably afford the services of a professional cover designer to come up with an initial design, it’s all the finicky changes I would need that would ramp up the bill beyond the limitations of my wallet (I can be a pain in the neck at times).
In the end, I find myself tackling the cover design myself and it’s a process I both love and loathe. I love it because when it’s finished it’s a snapshot, a negative, a frame of my imagination captured in full glossy colour. Knowing a great cover will be the end result is motivation itself to push and maintain the patience to produce the best work I can at the time. I loathe the process because it’s a tedious, frustrating and long winded operation that takes seven times longer than it ought to.
Thankfully, I’m in the fortunate position to call on my good friend Chris Linaker whose eye for design and creative flair has helped create almost all of my book covers. I know I drive him crackers at times with my indecision and fussiness, but he knows it has to be right and it’s worth putting in the time and effort.
When I first started writing in the late 1990s, I, like many writers starting out, just wanted to write a story and maybe, just maybe, someone from my immediate family would read it. Discovery House was my first book and existed as a ream of A4, its cover was the colour of the Lever Arch file it was crammed into (black if I remember). My writing aspirations were to finish and to have my brother read at least some of it. There wasn’t a need to create a cover. Fast forward to 2005 and that moment when the idea for The Eyes came into my head. I felt the idea was a strong one, in my opinion stronger than Discovery House, and set about writing the book with the same aspirations, 1. Finish it, 2. Buy a new Lever Arch file, 3. Print it out, 4 Get my brother to read it.
It wasn’t until I saw an ex-work colleague’s book, Dave Ditchfield’s Yuptoo, which he produced himself, that I realised it was possible, for a minimal cost, to turn They Grow Upon The Eyes into an actual ‘hold it in your hand’ book rather than a ‘rest it on your lap until your thighs go numb’ book. Of course, the book needed a cover, and with aspirations of an audience still rooted firmly in immediate family, I didn’t put much thought into it. My phone at the time had a decent camera so while out on The Eyes with the dogs, I snapped a few Giant Hogweed and used my favourite photograph as the cover, albeit with a sepia, slightly mottled filter over it.
I was pleased as punch with it; especially when a copy arrived at my house and I could actually hold it (it’s a thrill I still get to this day). Having an actual book meant I could give it to people outside of my immediate family because a book is less daunting than a ream of A4. Not even I knew how much interest it would generate, but it wasn’t until my writing tutor quipped to some other students that it looked like a stick of broccoli that i realised perhaps it was not the best picture to put on the front of a book. She was right but I didn’t know any better at the time so I left it.
Three years later when the sequel to They Grow Upon The Eyes, The Doom of the Hollow, was finally finished, I knew I had to produce it for an audience keen to read the next part of the story, however, I was still stuck in the ‘broccoli’ mindset and went back onto The Eyes with my camera, but this time the Giant Hogweed was dying. Here are a few example covers I toyed with, including possible titles for book 2 (thank goodness I changed them).
It wasn’t until my brother said, “I don’t think a dead plant makes a very good cover,” that my attitude to cover art changed because he was right. I was too focused on producing something that ‘would do’ because it was within my limited capabilities both with my design software and artistic eye. It was at that moment I spoke with my friend Chris Linaker and he kindly offered to help me. Even then the process was far from plain sailing, in fact, it started a long arduous task that drove us both mad. This is covered in part 2 of this cover art process.
Here are some of my own personal favourite covers. Disclaimer, I cannot vouch for the content or the actual existence of these books, but from a cover point of view, I don’t think my first attempt would look too much out of place with this lot.
I recall watching Quatermass when I was young, however, I don’t think it was the Hammer productions, instead the BBC adaptations. Because it was a long time ago I can no longer remember what the Quatermass films were about and what happened in them. The only recollection I have is the middle-aged, bearded scientist image of the leading role, Bernard Quatermass.
Amazon Prime have, or at least had, I’ve not checked in a while, both 1955’s The Quatermass Experiment and Quatermass II and I watched The Quatermass Experiment not so long ago. I thoroughly enjoyed it from a story point of view and thought the ideas and the way the plot unfolds was really good. My least favourite aspect was Quatermass himself played by Brian Donlevy. Spikey and uncharismatic, I felt the film would be better off without him and wasn’t 100% sure what he brought to the proceedings. However, the 1967 version of Quatermass and the Pit was in my Hammer Boxset and I was eager to find out what was in store and what Andrew Keir could bring to the role of the scientist
From IMDB
A mysterious artifact is unearthed in London, and famous scientist Bernard Quatermass is called into to divine its origins and explain its strange effects on people.
For some reason I thought I had already seen this Hammer Horror classic and maybe I had when I was younger but I could not recall the opening scenes suggesting I had not. I recognised imagery from the film thanks to trailers, clips and segments in Iron Maiden videos; perhaps this was the cause of my mistake. My expectations were high when hitting play as some, especially in the British Horror Group I am a member of, herald it as peak Hammer with the great Christopher Lee often siting The Devil Rides Out as his favourite Hammer film. It had a lot to live up to, however, invariably such films fail to deliver due to unmeetable expectations, but Christopher Lee, Devil worship, Charles Gray, directed by the great Terence Fisher…what could go wrong?
First of all, it was lovely to see Christopher Lee starring as the protagonist, not the action type, that was the job of Leon Greene, but as the wise council and voice of reason, no wonder it was Lee’s favourite Hammer film, he got the chance to play a good guy for once.
The film doesn’t hang about, as soon as Leone Green lands his plane and is met by Christopher Lee. He asks about someone called Simon and within a few lines of dialogue we’re at Simon’s new house because they’re worried about him and hadn’t seen him for at least three months. My first thought was he’d met a girl or taken a new job but it turns out he’s having a dinner party and hob nobbing with a group of new friends from an astronomical society. Of course, Christopher Lee suspects they’re all devil worshippers ready to sacrifice chickens. For me, it was a stretch for him to conclude this within the first nine minutes of the film and I wish more time was given for his suspicions to embed. A general decline in Simon’s behaviour perhaps or more clues gathered to Simon’s new ‘hobby’, it all happened a little too quickly, especially as Simon’s behaviour is quite pleasant and not sinister at all. Simon’s bought a new house, I’ve not seen him in three months that means he’s dealing in black magic. Simon insists Greene and Lee leave (this would make more than thirteen at the party and thus unable to perform the ritual) but Lee punches Simon’s lights out instead before kidnapping him and slugging the butler at the same time, it was all a little clunky for me.
One of the best Christmas presents I have ever received, yes, even greater than the roller-skates when I was seven, and I wrote that correctly, they were roller-skates not roller-boots which basically meant they were flipflops with wheels, was The Hammer Collection box set. 20 Hammer films including all their classic movies (although that’s a matter of opinion), some I have seen a long time ago and some I have yet to watch. I’m planning to cover some of them in this blog…well, I’ll see how I go.
The first one I fancied out of the box was 1965’s The Nanny with Bette Davies and Wendy Craig, a film I had not seen and the IMDB premise piqued my interest.
There's just something not quite right when Bette Davis stars as an English nanny. And is her 10-year-old charge an emotionally disturbed murderer or just an insolent brat?
The film opens with Bette Davies carrying a parcel through a playground and a park and all is good with the world, it has to be, the music by Richard Rodney Bennett tells us so. She eventually ends up at her employers who are having a to do where the mother is in tears and the husband is telling her to pull herself together, why? Because their son is coming home. Bette swans about as if this is a regular occurrence and already the husband and wife relationship is an uncomfortable watch with the prickly James Villiers, who also played a prickly role in For Your Eyes Only, instructing Wendy Craig to put some make up on while she bawls into a pillow.
I sadly missed Get Out when it was on at the local cinema and I’m quite glad I did because I’m not sure I would want to squirm in my seat in public for 110 minutes. I don’t think I’ve felt so uncomfortable watching a film, not even watching The Wicker Man. In fact, if you’ve not seen it, stop reading this and try and grab yourself a copy.
From IMDB: Chris and his girlfriend Rose go upstate to visit her parents for the weekend. At first, Chris reads the family's overly accommodating behaviour as nervous attempts to deal with their daughter's interracial relationship, but as the weekend progresses, a series of increasingly disturbing discoveries lead him to a truth that he never could have imagined.
The Descent, a well renowned, critically acclaimed British horror flick from the director of Dog Soldiers, had somehow passed me by over the years. With Google Play offering me only 99p to rent it for 48 hours, I thought I’d give it a go.
From IMDB: A woman goes on vacation with her friends after her husband and daughter encounter a tragic accident. One year later she goes hiking with her friends and they get trapped in the cave. With a lack of supply, they struggle to survive and they meet strange blood thirsty creatures.
I thought the opening was very interesting. It set up the extreme sports loving Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) and her friends, Juno (Natalie Mendoza) and Beth (Alex Reid) as we seen them white river rafting. Sarah’s other half and her daughter were at the bottom waiting for them and even in this short scene it was insinuated that there was something between her husband and Juno. On the way home, Sarah was distracting her husband whilst he was driving leading to a fatal car crash resulting in the deaths of both her husband and her daughter.
2013 scares from Andy Muschietti and a film that had been in my ‘to watch’ library for a while but, for some reason, never put aside enough time to watch. But, after the clunkers, Annabelle and IT, I was keen for at least a solid scare fest and, thankfully, Mama delivered.
From IMDB: The senior partner of an investment brokerage, Jeffrey Desange, has a breakdown due to a financial collapse and kills several co-workers and his estranged wife. He then kidnaps his two young daughters, Victoria 3 and Lilly just 1. He drives his car recklessly through a winding snow covered road. He loses control of his car and drives off an embankment. He finds an abandoned and isolated cabin where he plans to kill his daughters, but the children are saved by a dark ghostly image.
Jeffrey Desange’s twin brother, Lucas has been on the hunt for his missing brother and his family for five years, almost pushing himself into financial strife himself because of it. His girlfriend, Annabel (Jessica Chastain) is a punk rocker, more interested in her band than having a child, and so we begin her story arc as we witness her relative disinterest in the two children when they are found five years later in the same abandoned cabin.
The Horror Channel’s season continues with Hammer’s The Mummy. The myth of the Mummy is perhaps as old as horror itself and, for me, I’ve always found the start of such films more interesting than the final act. If you have a weakness for tombs, ancient tales of evil and grave robbing in your movies, then The Mummy always works because the creature is always hidden underneath a shroud of mystery. Only when the Mummy actually appears does a film usually fall into a chase movie. There’s nothing wrong with this but I’ve always felt the set up was always far stronger than the pay off because, and this is purely personal, I don’t find someone wrapped in bandages all that terrifying.
The film starts with a team of English archaeologists breaking into Princess Ananka’s tomb, and, before they are about to enter, Egyptian, Mehemet Bey, warns the archaeologists not to go into the tomb, but his wise words are ignored and rightly so because otherwise the film would have only been ten minutes long, including credits.
I don’t particularly want to waste too much time writing about IT The Movie because the less time spent thinking about this tedious affair the better in my opinion.
The film has a good reputation, a decent IMDB score and I was genuinely disappointed when I missed it at the local movie theatre. After the first five minutes I thought I was going to be in for a thrilling ride because the start was brilliant. When Georgie runs down the rain soaked street chasing his boat only for it to fall down a drain and we meet Pennywise for the very first time, I felt the dread because Bill’s Skarsgard’s portrayal of the clown, the script and cinematography in those few moments were sublime.
The third film in Warner Brother’s Conjuring universe focuses on the Annabelle doll first seen in the original Conjuring film. One cannot deny the Annabelle doll had a creepy presence in that film, especially the scene where was sat in a chair and her head slowly moved. Pediophobia is a relatively common so if you’ve going to include a weird looking doll with an uncomfortable stare in your movie then you’re already onto confirmed success, right? Not quite.
The film focuses on John (Ward Horton) and his heavily pregnant wife Mia (Annabelle Wallis) who live in a neighbourhood where people do not lock their doors and everybody goes to church. Mia collects dolls and, after upsetting his wife with a comment he clearly hadn’t thought through, he gifts her the Annabelle doll because Mia had been searching for it to add to her collection. One night, two members of a satanic cult break in their house and attack Mia. Thankfully, Mia and baby suffer only a modicum of stress, however her attackers were not so lucky. Once is shot by the police and the other slits her own throat whilst hold the Annabelle doll. From then on, strange things begin to happen around the home.
I noticed this film on Amazon Prime while I was looking for some alternative horror. I was drawn towards the thumbnail which is the portrait of a mature, lady with a thunderous expression and dressed in an early 1900’s garb. I thought I was going to get an old fashioned ghost story similar to the BBC Christmas ghost stories from yesteryear, but The Blackwell Ghost couldn’t be further from a Victorian spine chiller. Although, it does have something in common with the BBC, in style only, and that is 1992’s Ghostwatch.
At only an hour long, this mockumentory follows the exploits of Turner Clay as he puts his zombie movies on hold to look into whether ghosts are real. After putting out a call for paranormal experiences, only one piques his interest, a house in Pennsylvania where the owner experiences ghostly activity almost every day. It turns out a previous owner, Ruth Blackwell, had killed several local children and hidden the bodies in the drain beneath the house. What a lovely lady.