no really, several mood boards
I’ve been tinkering around over the summer with the mood board, a marketing phenom on social media (which probably has a time-honored tradition in various arts and professions, but I can’t tell you about it). The basic idea is to make a collage of fantasy artwork that communicates the feel of a story to potential audiences. Whether this has ever sold a single book, I cannot say, but I’ve been having fun with it.
I thought I’d drop a few and share some thoughts about them for the fun of it.
without further ado: colorful fantasy artwork!
The Spider’s Friend
I think this one (for the soon-to-be-released new trilogy The Spider’s Friend) is my favorite so far. Not sure I feel completely content with a wordless result, but it looks damned pretty. The colors I went with kind of startled me because the palette of this story is mostly ochre and pale blue; a lot of the action takes place on the inland sea or its arid surroundings.
It touches on some important moments and themes, though. There actually is a giant jellyfish. People who were once humans and have metallic stripes and spots on them. One of my characters renders assistance to a god of stormy oceans.
More than anything, this is just a surprising, novel world inhabited by many unique creatures. Most of them sentient. One of the narrative characters is a plant. I hope a bit of that came through in the imagery.
We
We is an epic, and the civilization at the center of the story is positively massive; it can’t really be said to have ‘a setting.’ Still, Barracheh began life as a series of ambitious city-states in a vast jungle, and it was fun to give tribute to that. It’s been around for thousands of years, and I did my best to litter the landscape with ruins, mysterious weathered artistry, and crumbling monuments.
The knifes are both pretty and a huge letdown for me. I found it impossible to turn up a decent image of A SWORD on any of the stock photo sites I visited. Since one of the best things about this series – at least for me, the person who wrote it – is Sathriel’s multitude of fight scenes, knifes don’t cut it. That’s the downside of using other artists’ work to make something: what you want may simply not be available.
untitled WIP
This is for my current work in progress. Tentatively two books, tentatively titled Under Dust and In Deluge. But don’t hold me to that. The images strike a cheerful contrast to the prior moods; Cianjera/ Fionbolo is a cheerful place, home to a peaceful people who live life to the fullest. This fabulous city doesn’t have a natural source of water, and the rains are coming later every year. If you want to get a peak at it, I published the first few chapters of an early draft last year.
In their most ancient past, two peoples met. One from a woodland, who gave birth to magi gifted in manipulating fire, heat, and explosive energy; the other from a desert, some of whom were born with the ability to control cold, moisture, and stillness. When they saw how perfectly opposite they were, they wondered what wonders they might build if they joined forces. For hundreds of years, it looked as if the answer might be: paradise.
Now, though, the Balance they struck is slipping. It’s too hot, too dry, and night-magi have gone extinct almost entirely. They’re left facing two frightening questions. Is it natural? And can it be fixed?
I was pretty pleased with the art I found and the end result of mixing it together. Magic, check. Party-loving paradise, check.
Now I just need to finish writing it!
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