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Artwork & Covers
Runcible Jones
Original artwork done by Simon Irvine for Ian, for the Runcible Jones books. Simon is now a movie animator and has worked on many big movies Including Legend of the Guardians, The Amazing Spider-Man, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Terminator Genesys and In the Heart of the Sea.
Bonus: A fly-around of Thandimanilon’s Tower on the magical world of Iltior
Sorcerer’s Tower
The wonderful covers and black and white internal illustrations were done by DM Cornish, award-winning writer and illustrator of the Monster Blood Tattoo trilogy. You can find more about his books and artwork at http://www.dmcornish.com/
Grim and Grimmer
The fantastic covers were done by World Fantasy Award-winning UK artist, Martin McKenna. Visit his official website to find out more about his work: http://www.martinmckenna.net/
The View from the Mirror
The covers for The View from the Mirror Quartet were all done by Mark Sofilas based on concepts prepared by the author and others. The following sequence shows stages in development of the covers for the Quartet, which have been used worldwide.
Initial concepts were developed around Ian’s kitchen table by Ian, Anne and Barrie Collins. An awkward early sketch by Ian is shown below (1996).
The Well of Echoes
The Australian covers for Geomancer and Tetrarch were painted by Nick Stathopoulos based on suggestions by the author and design concepts by Cathy Larsen. The cover illustration for Scrutator is by Marco Nero.
Geomancer won the Galaxy Bookshop Award for Best Designed Fantasy/Science Fiction Book at the Australian Publisher’s Association 50th Annual Book Design Awards.
The UK cover illustrations are by Lee Gibbons.
Designs
All Ian’s fantasy books were designed by Cathy Larsen of the Penguin Design Studio, Melbourne. The symbol on the Mirror, also by Cathy Larsen, is based on original artwork by Ian. The original image below was done by Anne in gold and silver leaf and crimson ink (1997).
The glyphs surrounding the Mirror on all four covers were lettered by Cathy Larsen based on designs by Ian, inspired by various South Asian scripts. The layout of these glyphs on the four Australian covers corresponds to the puzzle in The Way between the Worlds. In the Orbit and Warner covers, however, some glyphs have been moved and others added, so the arrangement no longer corresponds to the text.
The symbol for The Well of Echoes is based upon a 3-D minimal surface Scherk-Collins structure. For more on algebraic topology, go HERE.
Most international editions of The View from the Mirror (eg UK, US, Dutch, Bulgarian and Czech editions) used the original Australian covers.