New Work Published: Other Town by Ray Wennerstroem

 I kind of missed the boat on the publication date on this one by a couple of months, but this is another novel I have illustrated (including the cover).  "Welcome to...Other Town" by Ray Wennerstroem is a YA novel in the style of Clive Barker's "Thief of Always" or Ray Bradbury's "The Halloween Tree".  From it's Amazon description:

"When Georgie Robinson falls off his bike and gets lost in the woods, a strange adventure awaits.

Wandering through the forest, Georgie discovers an abandoned town that is not abandoned at all, but is filled with folks that are strange, wonderful, and frightening. While his dad and best friend, Pete, are searching for him, Georgie sees a Furliz, meets the Picklock Clan, and is guided through a strange town by a peculiar mayor with jellyfish skin and a very big hat.

But when a sinister plot is exposed, will Georgie find the help he needs before it's too late?"

Aside from the cover, I've provided several interior illustrations for this project.  This one was a bit experimental for me.  Around the time I started on this, AI art was just beginning to hit big, with several tools becoming available to the public.  I decided to play around with the tools and see if I could make an ethical use of AI generated images.  So for some of the images in this book, I fed prompts into a couple of AI tools and had them generate images that I used to help nail the composition and perspective of the finished images I would eventually create.  I printed out the generated compositions and traced over them on my light table, adding and changing details as I thought necessary, then scanned them back into my computer and digitally inked them on my tablet.  I wouldn't say this is my best work (although there is one image in the book I am especially fond of), but it was an interesting change to my process that opened up some new possibilities.

For anyone who has strong opinions on AI art, I'd love to know what you think of this use of the tool.  Was it ethical?  Is this a fair use of computer generated imagery, or just higher level cheating?  Feel free to drop a comment and let me know what you think.

New Work Published: Traveling Through the Eye of Cygnus X-1

 Out now from author Mark Eden, "Traveling Through the Eye of Cygnus X-1" is a science fiction novel set " just 70 years after the great war of 2112, a large federation starship called the S.F.P. Hadron sits in dry dock about 390 light years away from Earth, just inside the constellation Taurus on a planet called Magadon."  

I didn't design the cover for this one, but I have provided several interior illustrations for it, one of which is below.

From the book's Amazon description: 

"The Solar Federation of Planets has a traitor in its ranks and the small crew of an excavation starship are tasked with uncovering the traitors evil plot, warn the general, and survive traveling through the black hole of Cygnus-X1. The information they discover can possibly have huge ramifications for the planet Magadon along with the entire galaxy, so they will need to depend on the experience of their young Captain Jeffrey Scott.

The date is June 4th, 2182, just 70 years after the great war of 2112, a large federation starship called the S.F.P. Hadron sits in dry dock about 390 light years away from Earth, just inside the constellation Taurus on a planet called Magadon. The planet Magadon can be found among the eight hundred stars that make up the Pleiades star system situated inside the Milky Way galaxy. The Hadron is preparing for a journey in search of a young planet called Vilium that exists in the Triangulum galaxy. Captain Jeffrey Scott and his small crew aboard the Hadron have been specifically trained to excavate the cucial elements and minerals needed for creating a clean source of energy for the planet Magadon and its two inhabited outer moons, but their mission took them in an entirely different direction. The Captain and his crew found themselves in a tangled web of deceit, murder, and even love. It was up to the crew of the Hadron and the intelligent beings they pick up along the way to help strengthen the federation and to keep the malevolent creatures at bay."

 Eagle-eyed fans may be asking, and the answer is, yes, this book is inspired by the work of Rush.  I've managed to work a few visual references to the band's work into the illustrations, so keep an eye out for that.

This was a thoroughly enjoyable project for me, not just because I get to work on something related to my favorite musicians, but also because the concepts that Mark came up with were completely fun to illustrate.  I got to work in a lot of the kind of detail I enjoy using to make the illustrations interesting, and had a fair amount of creative freedom to design the characters and sets.  I also got to challenge myself a little bit with perspective and composition.  As I say, it was a fun project start to finish.

 Check out the book on Amazon, and let me know what you think!