Timewaster's Guide Archive
Local Authors => Brandon Sanderson => Topic started by: EUOL on August 28, 2007, 08:06:07 PM
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(http://www.brandonsanderson.com/graphics/mistborn3b.jpg)
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I'm glad this is getting used since I really liked the line art for it which we saw when we thought this was a possible MB1 paperback cover.
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This is my favorite MB cover so far. I think I might like it more than Elantris, even. Very nice.
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I'm not a huge fan of the wire frame she's standing on, or the feet in the upper left, but overall I really like it. It's certainly the best of the Mistborn covers in digital form, and I tend to like them even more when I see them in printed form, so hooray.
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I like the feet in the upper left. They're an excellent window into the souls of the beings surrounding her.
I am curious how it fits in with the story though. Isn't this a scene that takes place well before MB3?
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It looks cool, I like MB 2's cover more, but I also loved the last fight scene.
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Mmmmm. Jon Foster again. Tasty as always! One of my favorite artist doing the covers for one of my favorite authors, it doesn't get much better!
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Huh, a Mistborn cover I may actually like. How odd.
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That was my favorite scene in the book. I'm glad to see it's the cover.
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I really like it too. The colors are great. Should look awesome when it's printed. My only complaint (still) is that isn't it supposed to be a mistcloak, not a mistskirt?
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I think it's evolved into more of a "mistbelt" now. heh.
Mistbelt notwithstanding, this cover is ultra impressive. Vin looks a bit too frightened but her features (goodbye "Ugly Vin," hooray!) and her clothing as well as the surroundings are breathtaking. The feet in the corner are creepy and grotesque, as befits Inquisitors. So I'm with Skar on that. The color scheme is striking too, especially in the contrast between Vin and the Inquisitors. I never really imagined the spires of the Lord Ruler's palace having spikes but it does lend this *MB3* scene even more dramatic. Very cool.
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I think I like this one the best of the three.
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I think I may be in the minority on this one. While I still like it, it's my least favorite of the three.
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I really like Jon Fosters work. I am thinking of attempting to commission him to do a piece for me. Does anyone (Brandon) know approximately how much Jon charges for piece like this?
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I have no idea, honestly. I would guess it's in the low thousands. Two grand, maybe? I could be way off either direction. Plus, a contract from Tor would include payment for letting the image be on the cover, which would up the price from a regular comission.
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I like it but I'm not a fan of the shirt + skirt convo. It's too.... early 1900's for me and makes me feel like she just finished tea with the girls from the DAR or something. It's not my favorite (I really liked the first one) but I like it better than the second one!
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Oooh!! I love this cover.
Definitely eye-catching; just like the first two.
Yet for some reason, I think the artwork on Book3 will be my favorite.!
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The best cover so far I'd say. I like the colours :)
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I don't like her face, but other than that I think it's awesome. That scene was incredibly awesome and gripping, and I'm glad it got selected.
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Sad day... you don't like her face? I was just thinking it looks like me. I could play vin! I might need to learn to act first...
Either way I like it, but not nearly as much as the Elantris one. The cover was the reason I read that book and how I got to know about MB and Warbreaker
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I do like this cover better than the others, if only because Vin looks less like a goblinoid and more like a girl than on the prior covers. But, the Mist-skirt thing has bugged me on all the covers.
I would be interested to hear from EUOL or anyone else who knows the publishing business as to why cover artists are given so much artistic licence for these book covers? I mean, they are painting for business purposes, not to create a work to hang on someone's wall. It seems irksome that the artists can paint covers that go against the text of the novel, or when they seem to make little or no effort to follow the writer's descriptions. Some covers seem to have such crude or cartoonish style I don't understand why they were chosen for other than a children's book. Impressionistic is different from just poorly rendered. Don't the artists offer multiple paintings for the publishing company to choose from?
For example: The cover art for the hardcover of Knife of Dreams in the Wheel of Time series. Just poorly rendered, in my opinion, though I have seen worse...
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The artist's job is to grab the attention of a buyer, not to perfectly portray the story. It annoys me sometimes, but I totally understand why they do it. And you're right, the art's not to hang on the wall, it's to sit on a bookself, and the artist paints what the publishers tell them to.
The artist can only offer the publisher multiple concept drawings. Painting multiple covers would cause an artist to go bankrupt. And even after the artist submits the concepts, the publishers have them change and alter them all the time. A lot of times what the publisher chooses isn't even what the artist would have chosen themselves.
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Yeah, I'm in agreement with everyone else. I love this cover best. I read an interview where EUOL said that it was his favorite cover yet, and I have to agree.
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I *heart* this cover, perhaps best because it is just as good as the other two covers have been, which is very, very impressive to me.
I really do like how this cover shows a bit more of a zoomed out view which puts the fight into perspective, which nicely balances out the other two covers too. I like how each of the covers showed slightly different niches of action-tension of whatever.
On the first, she was looking like an assassin and rebel,
on the second, she was cruising across the forms of her enemies looking very lioness like, strained but still looking like she'd come within her own.
This cover she looks more like she's a little overwhelemed, rather "eeeeeee~!" and looking like she's still trying to think of the next move. (Plus; floating people = always cool. Much more of and impressive ability that zapping people with lighning, laser vsion, etc etc etc).
I think the covers go along very well with the trilogy thus far and have been mightily impressed by them every step of the way.
Not only do they use briliant colours (purple working really well in them) but they're such an astronomical improvement over most of the other books on my shelf, and are leagues ahead of most of the other fantasy books on my shelves, for instance the David Eddings covers (on my editions at least) which tend to far to strongly resemble tarot cards with their swords and orbs and other cliches.
These covers have been very dynamic and spirited and are as respectively unique and good as the books themselves have so far been. ^_^
All in all, the reader and illustration fans inside of me are very well satisfied so far ~!
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Yes, as you've mentioned, this is my favorite of them so far. I'm very curious to see the new paperback covers, however. They're doing a new one for MB2, it appears, since they're going to do a promo event for all of my paperbacks this summer.
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I'll be honest...I've never been a big fan of the cover art for the Mistborn series. I'm not sure why, but they've never quite appealed to me. The cover for Hero of Ages is probably the best so far, but still far from my favorite. Not a big fan fo having feet in my face with long toenails. (see top of art)
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/headslap I didn't recognize the Inquisitors. My mental image of them was not like that. Probably the only reason.
I'm glad Vin looks a lot better this time. I have to admit I was a bit put off by the "ugly" Vin on the other two covers.
Not a fan of the toes but I like the scene in and of itself. :)
I haven't seen the hardcover cover of Final Empire, so I never realized that it was different from the softcover version I have. I'll have to go find it.
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I have to say that I personally disagree. I like the overall cover, however, I liked how Vin was portrayed on the covers of the other books. I liked the more "realistic" artwork, not that this one isn't realistic. Maybe it's mostly the purple, it's a pretty colour, but it really seems to draw my attention in a way that I personally don't particularly like, unless that's the point of it. I personally liked what everyone is calling "ugly" Vin. I thought it was great to have a more realistic looking character, rather than the perfect complexion, pale faced rosy lipped feminine characters you often see elsewhere in the fantasy genre.
Like the over all concept, not a huge fan of how it was implemented :)
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Sorry, quick question from ignorant peon: *Why* do they change book covers from hardcover to papaerback across different editions? I've seen it happen a lot of course, but it's confused me at times because sometimes I've seen a cover for a newer edition for a book and had a big "Eeeeeee! why did they change their perfectly good cover to that icky thing!" moment. :(
Tend to experience it mainly because Australian and American books sometimes have different covers too (which is sometimes understandable because colours in particular have different meanings and connotations in other countries) but sometimes I do really have to scratch my head at them. I seem to recall the German/Italian/French books of Harry Potter had some very strange covers. The German ones scared me. :'( and one of them featured a happy mouse on the cover. O_o
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Marketing 101: Target Audience and Regional Awareness.
Cover are is designed to attract the target audience of the book, certain people like/expect certain types of covers. The book industry spends lots of money in research knowing what readers of specific genres like cover-art wise.
Different people buy Hardbacks compared to paperback buyers. This is an example of a different audience
North Americans (including Canada) have different expectations with cover art then the Brits or Australians even if they like the same genre, it's purely cultural even if the audience is the same.
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Huh, so it really is just that then. Oh well, guess it's more work for illustrators!
Kind of funny to what degree cultural stuff impinges itself, even when you'd think visual communication would be more universal than it really is. I mean, you can't even be sure a *colour* will have the same meaning in a different country. :-\
In European countries whute can be purity, in China it's the colour of death and in India white generally represented water, as opposed to blue. (And the Japanese believed that green was a shade of blue asnd still refer occasionally to things like zuccini and green traffic lights as being blue).
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It also has to do with scale some of the time. There are times that they wonder if the cover-art will scale down to a small paperback size well. Proportionally, the author name and the book name take up more space on a paperback than a hardback, so they try to take that into consideration. In MB1's case I believe this was partly responsible - and it was poorly executed...and Tor knows it.
Personally, I liked #2's art the best. It was darker and more gritty. Fit the feel of the book very well.
Im very interested in the new paperback covers. If it is still the same artist as mentioned on another post, these could be very striking.
Brandon: When do you expect some preview art for MB1 PB?
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It's nice I guess, but I have to say I'm almost always disappointed with fantasy covers. I wish sombody with Royo's skill would step up...
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So it sounds like everybodies dead set on this being Vin pulling up on a tower of kerdik shaw, with a bunch of inquisitors aroudn her. But how can we be sure? I see no spikes, and usually the cover doesn't miss much detail on the surroundings, even if they are vague in some places.
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So it sounds like everybodies dead set on this being Vin pulling up on a tower of kerdik shaw, with a bunch of inquisitors aroudn her. But how can we be sure? I see no spikes, and usually the cover doesn't miss much detail on the surroundings, even if they are vague in some places.
I don't know, I sort of thought maybe they might be EEEEEeeeEEeeeeeeEEeeeeevil mist creatures. (maybe).
Mostly I didn't bother driving my mind past the "ooooOOoooooo preeeetttty" :D stage of thought. I'm visually superficial or whatever. ;D
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I have to agree, Survivors Apostale, that I did not think that this represented that scene. There are too many inquistors and I can't see their spikes. Also, Vin's hair is way to long.
It is, however, in my opionion a great cover. My favorite one to date....
Oh and by the way Crystal Kitten, there really is such a thing as pretty girls in the real world.
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I know that, I just said that I liked the more "realistic" face they put on her at first. All I said was that I was tired of seeing the "perfect feminine beauty" as all the heroines in other fantasy culture. Why do they ALL have to be perfect and pretty, and by today's standards, often as not, as well. With small noses, pale skin, dark hair, and rosey lips... Just my preference... I'm kinda sick of the stereotypes... I don't really picture her as looking that way..