Last year I had the utmost pleasure to create the covers for a brilliant trilogy by the divine Celine Kiernan. You can tell I’m happy about that! It was a big undertaking and it was my decision to go all-out in their design and style to really shoot for something memorable that would also engage with the books as completely as possible. I also got to use my favourite style for the first time on a cover – very rewarding.

Well the books have gone into heaps of countries, they have been winning acclaim left, right and centre, and while different covers abound, mine have received a fantastic response. Most recntly from the SFSignal blog. Here are a couple of the comments (joy!)…

“I love these covers so hard.  If I had the shelf-space I would display them all face-out on my bookshelves.  I’m entranced by the layers of perspective – I feel like I could stick my arm into each one and it would go for miles.”

AND WHAT’S MORE…

The 59th Annual Australian Publishing Association Book Design Awards 2011 judging is complete, and the shortlist results are in.

AND…

Best Designed Children’s Cover of the Year
Crowded Shadows: The Moorehawke Trilogy Vol II – cover by Bruno Herfst, illustrations by Elise Hurst

The Best Designed Children’s Series
Crowded Shadows: The Moorehawke Trilogy Vol II – cover by Bruno Herfst, illustrations by Elise Hurst

The winners will be announced on Thursday, 19 May.

Wooohooo!!!

]]> http://www.elisehurst.com/journal/2011/02/the-moorehawke-covers-live-on/feed/ 1 http://www.elisehurst.com/journal/2011/01/mondoodle-24-01-2011/ http://www.elisehurst.com/journal/2011/01/mondoodle-24-01-2011/#comments Mon, 24 Jan 2011 11:13:19 +0000 elise http://www.elisehurst.com/journal/?p=2049 My hands weren’t up to drawing today but it doesn’t matter because I received something very exciting to share! The Russians are releasing the Moorehawke Trilogy by Celine Kiernan and they’re using my covers. Woohoo!

And here’s the first one! I LOVE it.

I’ve always found it very exciting to see any of my work appearing on a translated work. It’s just so damn exotic and cool. And did I mention that I LOVE it?

On the weekend I was in Sydney for an ASA meeting and I arrived with a little time to spare. So I wandered along the street until I came to the Hill of Content bookshop (in Balmain) where, to my delight, I found these…

They are the Nutshell Library by Maurice Sendak (published by Harper Collins) comprising of: One Was Johhny a counting book, Alligators All Around an alphabet, Chicken Soup with Rice a book of months, and Pierre a cautionary tale in five chapters and a prologue. I just realised I’ll have to photograph them with something to show the size. Haha – you just can’t tell they’re so titchy… about 10 cm high I think.

But there’s more!! I just found out about these on the Orbit blog… they are beautiful, tiny complete versions of the Moorehawke series and those black and white ones… are my covers. They were put together by an artist called Nyukaa and they look magnificent!

Forgive me for including some quotes here but I was just bursting with pride! It’s a great article. Celine’s books have gone all round the world and there are 6 different covers for the trilogy, which really means 24 different covers… the article asks here about them all.

Celine: I think of all my covers, the ones that hit the mark in all three respects (story, tone and characters) are the Australian ones. They are quite simply stunning. Australian fans often take time to praise the cover art to me, this is, I suspect, very rare.

…

It’s not immediately obvious but there are many subtle details on the AUS covers which reflect aspects of the story ( my favorite of these being the ravens that flow from cover to cover; the way Wynter is still wear Christopher’s jacket on cover three, and most especially, the way she is carrying Razi’s falchion sword: this is such a subtle and lovely symbol of a moment in book three where Wyn takes up Razi’s burden when he can go no further.) Another huge reason for my love of these covers is the inclusion of Razi – it can’t have been easy to come up with a design that included all three major characters, so many story elements, and such a strong sense of drama without cluttering the page. Lovely.

The full article is here. I am so happy that the experience for Celine was positive and that we were able to be in such close contact. It makes a big difference to be able to ask the author all those questions – I know I’d appreciate someone asking me.

And then there’s this one which is a great article about fantasy cover art – the good the bad and the ugly! I love the graph of clichéd elements of cover art – from unicorns to swords and “the completely dark cover of meaninglessness”. Mine fall under the heading (and she blushes) of “Really Awesome Cover Art In Fantasy” which, they are happy to note, also seem to sell the books.

My favourite response of all though is a reader who bought the book overseas then, on seeing the Australian covers, had to buy it again That’s more than I could have hoped for!

I’m allowed to show you the final Moorehawke covers now! Written by the wondrous Celine Kiernan and published here by Allen & Unwin – I can’t wait to see them in-store! Here are each of the individual covers and the collated image below.

I’ve heard that they’re developing some great posters for the shops.

As you may know, they were done as one single illustration and they should all match up when laid side by side. I’m so pleased that they are being published in black and white without wanting tinting. It’s a much stronger set of covers this way. Thanks A&U! Click the below images for big versions…

And as an extra complication I made it so the centre image could tile. Just for fun…