Earlier this year, A.C. Sobrero asked me to do a cover for the third book in their series, “The Luminous Fleet”. We ended up tossing a lot of email back and forth discussing the themes of the story, what kind of book covers we liked, and playing with ideas. Ultimately I wound up illustrating a scene where the commander of the invading Earth fleet talks to the Sorceror-General of the local furryish natives; I chose to do this in a style inspired by Japanese woodblock prints, since some part of the culture of the locals is inspired by Meiji-era Japan. Which was really not in the same stylistic place as a lot of the eighties SF covers we were initially looking at, but works for the story – culture clash is a major theme, and attempting to make the cover be from the non-human point of view felt like it tied into that.
Also it let me ask myself “how would Hokusai depict a floating hologram window” and any day where I get paid to ask questions like that is a pretty good day. :)
And for what it’s worth, Gary Ruddell’s cover for Bujold’s “Mirror Dance” was the particular inspiration for this overall composition; I had to pull back somewhat to get space to show something of the cultural differences with the outfits, and account for the extreme height differences (the lady was raised in low-gee, so is Very Tall), but this was the image that popped into my head as something to really push the “there is a conflict” theme when I was doing initial thumbnails.
And here is a screenshot of the Illustrator file with some of the reference material sprawled around the artboard. Not included: the books of Japanese prints I have on the shelves of my library that I flipped through and pondered.
Illustrator, 11.5 hours.