Author Topic: Official Gathering Storm Cover Impressions  (Read 12446 times)

Skar

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Re: Official Gathering Storm Cover Impressions
« Reply #15 on: May 15, 2009, 05:37:42 PM »
I'm glad I'm not alone.  Mr. Sweet has much to answer for here.  I went to his site not believing that an artist could be making a full time living turning out work that looks like this.  I was right.  He's capable of much better stuff.  It looks like he simply didn't care about this cover at all.

I'm going to guess that he wangled a contract for every book in the series early on, but doesn't care enough now to either do a good job or let Tor out of the contract so they can hire someone who does care.
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Re: Official Gathering Storm Cover Impressions
« Reply #16 on: May 15, 2009, 05:46:55 PM »
I'm not a fan.  I like many of the covers, but this one... it just feels way, way off.

And the caption that comes to my mind is from the second Ninja Turtles movie... "And next time I'll use mustard!"
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Renoard

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Re: Official Gathering Storm Cover Impressions
« Reply #17 on: May 15, 2009, 05:53:32 PM »
I like the work he did on the other books, and I think it's best to keep the same artist for the entire run.  But I have a friend that thinks his work on EotW is the worst cover she's ever seen and this one will bother her more.  The woman is the background, I'm assuming Nyneave is distorted as if painted by someone who never studied figure painting.

It might be nice to have an edition with Miyazaki doing the covers.
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Re: Official Gathering Storm Cover Impressions
« Reply #18 on: May 15, 2009, 06:02:28 PM »
I must be one of the few who actually prefers the US covers to the UK ones.

Path of Daggers, Winter's Heart and Crossroad of Twilights are amazing covers in my opinion, the new one doesn't look as good but it's in no way a bad cover.

I would be very unhappy if they changed the cover artist for the remaining books of the series.

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Shard

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Re: Official Gathering Storm Cover Impressions
« Reply #19 on: May 15, 2009, 06:10:51 PM »
I like the work he did on the other books, and I think it's best to keep the same artist for the entire run.  But I have a friend that thinks his work on EotW is the worst cover she's ever seen and this one will bother her more.  The woman is the background, I'm assuming Nyneave is distorted as if painted by someone who never studied figure painting.

It might be nice to have an edition with Miyazaki doing the covers.

That can't be Nynaeve, she has very dark hair and braided hence all the braid tugging through out the books.
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Bookstore Guy

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Re: Official Gathering Storm Cover Impressions
« Reply #20 on: May 15, 2009, 08:56:19 PM »
Sweet is doing for Jordan what Lockwood does for Erikson - not giving a crap. Its as if Sweet woke up one morning and said, "Crap. I have to do another lame cover. What do I have in my garbage pile that I can recycle?" I especially love how disproportional Rand's legs are compared to his body. Did his legs go anorexic after his pathetic climax in the last novel? And who is that figure behind him? I wasn't aware goblins were part of the WoT mythos.

Rather than my original assumption that he was screaming "KAAAHHHHHNNNN!", I am now under the impression he is screaming, "Light blind you Sweet! SWEEEEEEEEET!" I imagine it is very similar to, yet more vehement than, Brandon's "Scalzi!!!!"

The UK cover may not be dramatic, but it has a simplistic elegance to it that makes it grab the eye. Covers are meant to attract you. They are not supposed to make you want to cover your child's eyes because they will give him nightmares.
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Inkthinker

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Re: Official Gathering Storm Cover Impressions
« Reply #21 on: May 15, 2009, 09:14:51 PM »
The simple answer is DKS just doesn't care, he apparently thinks Cover art is glorified billboards and not art.

In a manner of speaking, that's exactly what cover art IS. It's designed to grab your eye quickly and encourage you to pick up the book. It serves the same purpose as a billboard, which is to get your attention in a fraction of a second.

Which isn't to say that I think he's doing a good job of it here. But then again, I can only think of a handful of Sweet covers that I did like, and they're all old.

I can't bag on the man, he's doing a job and he's been doing it for decades. But I do feel like he just doing
"a job", and he dropped the ball on this one.

Patriotic Kaz

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Re: Official Gathering Storm Cover Impressions
« Reply #22 on: May 15, 2009, 09:16:02 PM »
I say ink makes the cover!!!!
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Re: Official Gathering Storm Cover Impressions
« Reply #23 on: May 15, 2009, 09:20:50 PM »
Or more logically, maybe he could do the covers for a special edition.  It's important not to break up the set, unless Sweet does something drastic.  I'm thinking mailing random body parts to the one that got away and an overt fascination with sunflowers.
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Bookstore Guy

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Re: Official Gathering Storm Cover Impressions
« Reply #24 on: May 15, 2009, 10:36:39 PM »
I can't bag on the man, he's doing a job and he's been doing it for decades. But I do feel like he just doing
"a job", and he dropped the ball on this one.

This is exactly what i mean. He did a "job" with no passion behind it. Todd Lockwood is the same way - on his Drizzt covers, you can tell he has a passion for them, and goes all out. They look incredible. Then you look at the Erikson covers he has done (#s 3+) - it looks like while he was doing it said, "Who gives a &*^%. I haven't actually read this, so I dont give a ^&*(. Yay for paychecks on stuff I wouldn't even hang in my house!"

Covers like these make the marketing dollars spent promoting the novel useless.
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AGrey

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Re: Official Gathering Storm Cover Impressions
« Reply #25 on: May 16, 2009, 12:34:30 AM »
The simple answer is DKS just doesn't care, he apparently thinks Cover art is glorified billboards and not art.

In a manner of speaking, that's exactly what cover art IS. It's designed to grab your eye quickly and encourage you to pick up the book. It serves the same purpose as a billboard, which is to get your attention in a fraction of a second.

Well, it sure draws your eye in, but this is not the kind of attention that you really want...

Now, Brandon gets great cover artists for his books.  It was the amazing cover of Elantris (hardback, when it first came out) that drew me in to reading his works in the first place.
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Re: Official Gathering Storm Cover Impressions
« Reply #26 on: May 16, 2009, 01:06:00 AM »
The simple answer is DKS just doesn't care, he apparently thinks Cover art is glorified billboards and not art.

In a manner of speaking, that's exactly what cover art IS. It's designed to grab your eye quickly and encourage you to pick up the book. It serves the same purpose as a billboard, which is to get your attention in a fraction of a second.

Well, it sure draws your eye in, but this is not the kind of attention that you really want...

Now, Brandon gets great cover artists for his books.  It was the amazing cover of Elantris (hardback, when it first came out) that drew me in to reading his works in the first place.

That's the exact same thing that drew me into his works.

On the bright side, though, at least Rand isn't breakdancing. You can only really have a cover like the early mock-up if your book is called "Breakdancing in the Wheel of Time: An In-depth Perspective."
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Re: Official Gathering Storm Cover Impressions
« Reply #27 on: May 16, 2009, 01:44:32 AM »
You, too, can be breakdancing through the Ages.

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Raphael

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Re: Official Gathering Storm Cover Impressions
« Reply #28 on: May 16, 2009, 03:20:53 AM »
I cried when I saw the cover.

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Re: Official Gathering Storm Cover Impressions
« Reply #29 on: May 16, 2009, 03:35:13 AM »
If his upper body was in any way proportionate to his legs I wouldn't totally hate this as the worst cover in the WoT series and maybe any fantasy series. But, alas, look at that barrel chest atop twigs.
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