Welcome to the most in-depth, behind-the-scenes, play-by-play account of how a cover is born, from the point of view of the Art Department. We’re charting the conception and birth of the Shadowdance series by David Dalglish.

So far we have talked about the first real step of a book, Acquisition, and then what goes into Cover Briefing. Then we let our minds wander and collect inspiration and form Directions for the cover. Then we agree on a Photographer and Illustrator. We’ve even found our hero, the Cover Model. And we found a Trampoline for him to do stunt work on safely. Now, to outfit him in the proper Costume & Props.

First, we have a fantastic video clip from the day of the photo shoot talking about all the props and costuming…

Our illustrator, Gene Mollica, is an expert when it comes to pulling together the necessary costuming and weapons. He has a great number of artists he works with to either adapt or create custom details, and he really geeks out on it. But first, Art Director Kirk Benshoff had to figure out exactly what these special cloaks were all about…

While I was hunting down a location for the photo shoot and finalizing the logistics with Bryce, I needed to get a costume ready as well. I figured David wasn’t going to be to keen on Haern dressed in an all black sweat suit with a couple inflatable swords for the cover. So I needed to work with our illustrator Gene Mollica to get all the details sorted out on the styling.

But before I go into that, let me tell you a little bit about Gene. Gene is awesome. Gene was that kid who loved fantasy so much as a kid, he never let it go as he got older. You talk to Gene about a project like this and you can feel his enthusiasm over the phone. As an art director, I get even more stoked about the project as I feed off his eagerness.  I gave Gene the details about everything and you can hear his brain running a mile a minute brainstorming about what we can/should/MUST do. Another amazing thing about Gene is he has an arsenal of weapons and props to contribute, either made or modified. I’ve been trying to talk him into letting me use his stuff for Halloween but he been (understandably) hesitant. :)

One of the first things I felt was really important was Haern’s three-piece cloak. Even though there was going to be a lot going on in the pictures, I wanted the cloak to be as accurate as possible. I worked up a few options that I ended up running past David to get his feedback:

After talking, David settled on Option #2 which was then sent to Gene and his costume designer.

Gene and I needed to work out other details on the cloak as well. What was the color going to be? What kind of fabric did we want to use? Different fabrics can look very distinct once they’re photographed. Also, how was the fabric going to flow with the floor fans once Bryce started running with the cloak on? We want a strong image as a foundation so we can add drama and badass-ness later.

Over the course of the next few weeks we went back and fourth on changes and edits to the final cloak.

Round 1

Round 2

Round 3

Round 4 – Front View

Round 4 – Side View

Haern was also going to be rocking armor as well. While the Cloak was being made, Gene was getting the leather chest plate, gauntlets, knives, throwing stars, and swords all made. Each piece meticulously put together by hand in amazing detail!

Once all the pieces to the costume were done, we were ready for the shoot and the biggest challenge of my career… finding an available day in everyone’s calendar to schedule the photo shoot. ;)

Welcome to the most in-depth, behind-the-scenes, play-by-play account of how a cover is born, from the point of view of the Art Department. We’re charting the conception and birth of the Shadowdance series by David Dalglish.

So last week we talked about the first real step of a book, Acquisition, which is how a manuscript finds it’s way from the author to the editor, usually via an agent. We’re glossing over a ton of Editorial detail because this is a series about covers, but rest assured, there’s a lot of meetings, discussion, impassioned debate, etc. going on there. I mention it as part of the cover process at all, because, as Devi mentioned, at Orbit, discussing possible cover directions can often help us decide whether or not we are going to try to acquire a new author, series, or book. Very frequently Tim or one of the editors will brainstorm with me about what kind of cover a book they’re thinking of acquiring might have. How would it be different from the other books in the same subgenre at Orbit already? Would it be a chance to do something awesome and push the look of covers in the marketplace? Do I have a gut feeling initially about whether it would have to be photo, or illustration, or design? This can be dangerous because asking me to think about a cover direction is like letting a greyhound out of the starting gate and my brain is halfway down the track before I remind myself that we might not end up buying the book and then I’ll be all disappointed.

So, because at Orbit we’re all brainstorming on things all the time, Acquisition kind of bleeds into this stage, Cover Briefing. Which is when Art & Editorial have a meeting and Editorial officially tells Art to start working on a cover. Over the years I’ve refined a “Cover Briefing Form” to help Editorial get all of their thoughts down on paper. It’s not so critical that every piece of info is final, it’s more of a jumping-off point for a discussion. For example, if you look at the Cover Briefing Form for the first Shadowdance book, A DANCE OF CLOAKS (US | UK | AUS), you’ll see the tagline was different, and we didn’t have a quote yet. But Devi and I had already talked about how we wanted to focus on cloaks and movement and dance, so she already put that in the notes.

Cover Briefing A Dance of Cloaks

We also talk about what the priorities for a cover are – simply put, what things do we want the cover to say, and in what order. Alex Lencicki, our Marketing and Publicity Director also comes to the cover launch, and he contributes greatly in talking about what the target audience for a book would be, what is going on in the rest of the marketplace, what competition would be for this book, etc. For this series we knew we wanted great dynamic action first, we wanted to grab people with the cool factor of the action as our first priority. Target audience was slightly more dominantly male, but not exclusive to female fans. We were looking to please our genre audience, but also attract some action movie fans as well.

Any author input already given to the Editor will be discussed at this stage, and often the Editor and I will talk about what materials I can get started on – do we have a manuscript ready to read? Just a few sample chapters? I also find it really helpful to make sure to check in with the author at the beginning of the cover process, either through the editor or directly with the author. I think Orbit is pretty unique in that I try to keep the authors as much in the loop as possible through the cover process. In SFF, so much is created straight out of the author’s imagination, it’s really helpful to hear world building details and ideas directly from them. Some have even made pinterest inspiration boards that I can look at for inspiration. At this stage I really have no idea what direction we’re going to take, I’m just gathering as much info as I can, to stew on for a little while.

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Welcome to the most in-depth, behind-the-scenes, play-by-play account of how a cover is born, from the point of view of the Art Department. We’re charting the conception and birth of the Shadowdance series by David Dalglish. I’ll be your emcee thru the process, with all the important players chiming in. 

The first stage of any book being born is Acquisition, or how an editor comes to find and buy a book to publish. This can happen a few ways, but by far the most common is for an agent to pitch the manuscript to an editor. Agents are a very important part of the publishing process. They’re kind of gatekeepers, coaches, and parents, all rolled up into one. They know the editors working in their genres, and they know what kinds of manuscripts each publishing house is looking for.

Although I do hear a lot about what goes on in the acquisition process, I’m not officially part of it. A lot of times the editors here will have a chat with me about the book they’re considering, see what I think we can do with the covers, etc. – but for the most part, this is more Editorial’s game, so I’ll let you hear from Devi Pillai, Editorial Director of Orbit, and the author himself, David Dalglish. Before I do, though, keep in mind that this was a slightly different case, as David had self-published the series already. Above you can see the original covers he produced for the first 3 books. We’ll talk in the next post about comparable titles and marketplace considerations, but in general, they’re very nice quality compared to a lot of what I see in the self-published world, so I was happy to be working with an author who had some grasp of what makes a good cover.

FROM DEVI:

Michael Carr, David’s fantastic agent, sent me an email asking if I was interested in David Dalglish’s Shadowdance series. I, of course, was over the moon to get a chance at working with David and his world. We immediately started the acquisition process which involves considering how we wanted to position the books (which includes the metadata, the covers, etc).  We determined that the books would be better presented as a series versus a trilogy, so we knew we had to change the cover style for all six books. To do this, I brought in Lauren and Kirk from the Art Department to discuss what the cover direction would be. We thought that David’s covers had presence with his existing audience, but with rebranding the series, we wanted to go in a different direction.  We loved the photographic, yet very martial arts look of movies like Hero and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and thought a cover using Haern’s cloakdance would be the best portrayal of the series.

FROM DAVID:

When I first came up with the idea for A DANCE OF CLOAKS (US | UK | AUS), the book was very much inspired by Brent Weeks’s Night Angel trilogy. Those covers of his, I adored. I studied them a ton, wanting to pick up the subtler things as a way of helping to identify my own books as belonging in a similar vein and genre. I loved the white space, the solitary figure, and the little flourish of color that helped seal it together. And it was those elements I shamelessly ripped off implemented as well. I had a figure upon white background (the faceless woman, Zusa), and it was her deep red cloak that added the flourish of color, as well as a nice artistic over-the-top decoration as it looped around.

Going in, I had a feeling what the new covers would be like, at least in concept. Simply put: they were going to put Haern on the cover. Now I didn’t know if he’d be on all of them like he is now, but I knew he’d be gracing the cover of book one, and most likely be looking badass. Beyond that, I could only cross my fingers and wait to see what Orbit’s art department came up with.

So in one respect, I was curious how Orbit might remain faithful to my original covers, yet not end up duplicating one of their own previous covers. Was it even possible?