One
of my favorites. I'm particularly pleased with this one because the
book it illustrates has won the Eppie 2001 Award for Best Science Fiction.
As with most of these images, there was a fair bit of work involved
in putting it together. I have indulged myself to a small extent by
presenting the art sans title lettering; below is a small version
of the way the cover art looks when "printed."
I
originally intended on doing this cover as a painting, or a drawing.
I did a number of sketches, but in the end, partly in the interests
of time, I decided to do the artwork entirely on the computer. However,
I worked hard to make the art look as "hand made" as possible.
The
background looks like a piece of batik because it is a piece
of batik. I was searching for something different to use as a background,
something that would match the color scheme but not overpower the
interesting foreground tableau. I have a CD full of batik art -- a
weird idea, yes, but it came as part of a set. Lord knows if I'll
ever use another such image, but as soon as I saw this one I knew
it would fill the bill. I ran it through a couple of Photoshop
filters (twirl and blur), which added a nice feeling of motion and
imparted a quasi-watercolor look to it. Serendipity provided a flat
area on the bottom that looks as if it could be a bed, so I positioned
the figure there.
The
figure was out of Poser 2, deliberately made to appear somewhat
scrawny and underweight. The main character awakens from suspended
animation after a few centuries, having been frozen because she has
cancer and is wealthy enough to afford to sleep until a cure is found.
She's had chemotherapy, so she's bald. She has also had a mastectomy,
her right breast being removed. The original version of this cover
was reversed -- Bob Rich reminded me that her right breast had been
removed. Oops! So I flopepd the image. An easy fix -- I wish all art
problems could be handled that easily! Additional Photoshop
filters gave the figure a "sketchy" texture that I find
pleasing, and I manipulated the black and white pixel values with
the Curves function to give the figure a somewhat "overexposed"
look.
The
golden geometric shapes represent the sentient computer that awakens
her. In the book, the machine is singular; but I enjoy the conceit
of the multiple shapes. For one thing, that allows for the multiplicity
of reflected images. All the geometry was done in trueSpace -- I imported
the Poser figure, added the shapes, and played with the lighting and
the positioning of the elements until I was satisfied. The cone suggests
that the computer is actively paying attention to the woman.
Sleeper
Awake is available in PDF format from Clocktower Books.
