Quote:
Originally Posted by j. d. worthington  This is hardly fair to cover artists, I'm afraid. The truth is that they are often given very little to go on by the publisher, are pressed for time, and are frequently bouncing between feast and famine, so they need whatever commissions they can get.
This is hardly new, as I recall tales of various pulp artists where they would sometimes get the contents for several magazines at a single go, and they were supposed to come up with the art for individual pieces as well as the cover in a matter of days; this meant they seldom had any time for doing more than scanning (at best) the stories, and usually were up 2-3 days straight simply trying to get the work out in time for the printer. I don't believe it's that bad (usually) today, but now and again I hear tales that indicate it's not always that much better.... |
I think this is very true. Especially the part I quoted in bold. I have been a freelance artist for about 6 years (though mostly in computer games biz, but I also do some SF/Fantasy covers too) and the part about
"bouncing between feast and famine" is very true indeed. Despite my best efforts of promoting myself as a freelance artist I can have periods lasting months of no work at all, and then have periods of unusually high amounts of work offers.
As for the amount of information given to go by, this varies a great deal. Some clients barely give any instructions at all (few sentences only, no book synopsis) while others can send me a whole chapter and a great deal of extra info for the actual scene they want to have illustrated.
When I was younger, inexperienced and naive I often used to think that many SF/Fantasy covers look simplistic and I can do better than that. And yes I can - under
ideal conditions (no deadlines, no stress, good health, secure financial situation, etc), Just like I'm sure most of those artists responsible for those simplistic covers could do. But once you throw in the reality of it all, aka life, you get a lot more respect for those simplistic looking covers.