Wednesday 3 February 2010

Murderous Maths covers


I've done a few of these covers now (ten, I think) and worked on a full colour book with Kjartan, providing illustrations and strips throughout, Amazon says that book is out in April. I'm not the world's most natural cartoonist as my instinct is to 'draw' rather than 'cartoon'. That inconsistency runs through these images - cartoon schematics clashing with attempts at 'figurative' anatomy. It's a difficult balance to strike. There some very successful cartoonists/comic artists whose work has the feel of real people wearing cartoon masks which sometimes bothers me. Hergé of course solved this dichotomy with an even line weight throughout and of course delicately chosen and placed cartoon features.
I'll keep working on the cartooning because I have so much to learn and much of what I want to achieve with my writing involves cartooning well.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...
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sam hearn said...

Dear Rob,

These look great. I regularly look over at Huzzah etc and think it's brilliant too. I'm amazed at how many different ideas you can turn out. Very inspiring! Btw - is it Richard Smith at Scholastic who commissions you for these? My other half is a designer there and I know him : ) I've done quite a bit of fiction for them too.

All the best. Sam.

Rob Davis said...

Hi Sam

I often work with Richard, but these MM covers are commissioned by Sergio. Had a look at your blog and like your work. For some reason I'm always doing 'factual' rather than fiction at Scholastic. Dunno why...
but Scholastic pay the mortgage so I haven't got a bad word to say about them ;-)

 
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