{"id":140,"date":"2010-01-12T13:28:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-12T13:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/2010\/01\/12\/zoo-city\/"},"modified":"2014-12-14T18:45:22","modified_gmt":"2014-12-14T18:45:22","slug":"zoo-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/2010\/01\/12\/zoo-city\/","title":{"rendered":"ZOO CITY"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p> $\"\"$ <\/a>Here\u2019s my final cover illustration for Lauren Beukes<\/a>\u2018 forthcoming novel ZOO CITY<\/a>. It\u2019ll be an Angry Robot<\/a> mass market paperback, coming this May. Lauren is the author of one of 2009\u2019s breakout hits, MOXYLAND<\/a>. She describes ZOO CITY as an urban fantasy \u2014 \u201ca muti noir set in a re-imagined Johannesburg. It\u2019s the story of a girl with a sloth on her back, a dirty 419 habit and the magical ability to find lost things who gets drawn into a case to find a missing pop star.\u201d\n

$\"\"$ <\/a>Here\u2019s my initial thumbnail doodle for the cover. I even drew in a first stab at the typography, just to get some sense of how that might work (or not). I knew I was only responsible for the cover art, but I factor in the type placement when I sketch thumbnails for covers. Sometimes I draw it in, even if I\u2019m not designing the final type, and sometimes I just leave space for it. It\u2019s always a consideration though. The final type design is by Argh! Nottingham (see below), and I dig it. It\u2019s a simple, strong solution, and says \u201cnoir\u201d without being cliche.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/a>As for the art, I was given a solid brief from Angry Robot that described what they wanted on the cover. They wanted three main characters, and their pets, to be the focus, and offered a fairly specific way to handle it. I saw the cover a completely different way, but made sure to include all of the elements (main characters, pets, setting, mood, attitude). They were terrific and said \u201cgo for it!\u201d<\/p>\n

Relevant note here \u2014 it\u2019s not often that authors have input during the process of making a cover. There are lots of reasons for this, and that could be a whole blog post by itself. The point is it doesn\u2019t happen often. In this case, Lauren was very involved, and she and Marc Gascoigne (publishing director) were fun collaborators. It was my first time working with Angry Robot, and a pleasure. They\u2019re building a terrific line of books. I\u2019m really excited about ZOO CITY, and am already looking forward to its release in May.<\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"