Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Groovy

My book project revealed, it's the UK edition of Bruce Campbell's autobiography 'If Chins Could Kill'! There's a new intro by Mr Campbell for this edition, and here's the full wraparound cover I drew for it.

Dumb luck that I got the chance to do this, and nothing like my original idea, but the chance to do it even if it was a very definite brief was too hard to pass up.
Art style was done as requested, the look is supposed to somehow be a cross between the classic EC sensibility and a more modern take a la Bryan Hitch.
The book is being published by Aurum and will be available fairly soon at Amazon, Waterstones and Bookdepository and loads of places, even ones on streets.
And for anyone interested, here's my first idea, it's rough, and based on a fairly recognisable Evil Dead still, but my take was to make the cover look like an issue of Famous Monsters.

13 comments:

thekelvingreen said...

Wow. Congratulations on bagging this one. I would guess that if you'd had any contact with the Man Himself, you'd have shared by now.

Great image there. It really captures what we all love about Bruce and his films, and it's a million times better than the cover on the version I have.

(It's a great read, by the way.)

I really like the "rejected" cover too. It's vaguely Lovecraftian, which is fairly appropriate, I'd say.

Unknown said...

Oh, very cool. Nice job!

Danny said...

Nic says 'Wow!' Thought I'd share!

Steve Denton said...

that Came out really well. I think you managed to Keep the EC look and the cult charm of Bruce himself.

Faff said...

Now that's gonna look good on a cv.
Congrats Paul, it's been a long time coming but I hope this is the start of something really big.

paulhd said...

Kelvin - No contact with Mr Campbell sadly. Glad to hear it's a good read, looking forward to giving it a go.
Faz - Thank you kindly.
Danny - Tell Nic 'ta'.
Steve - That's nice to hear, it was a struggle!
Peter - Here's hoping - hope you're getting work done too!

shane oakley said...

fuck me! that's a sweet job, paul! love the colours, composition and the glowing eyed(!)zombies, brucey would be/should be proud.

ps;and very much liking where y going with art on HUZZAH!turning 'pencils' into 'inks' is a nice trick, but not everyone does it well, most end up muddy and smudgy, but yours still looks like you've used a pen - nice!

paulhd said...

Cheers Shane. Glowing eyes, now where did I get/steal that idea......
Glad you dig the pencilled look, got a couple of tightdeadline jobs to do then I'm going to do another asap.

Anonymous said...

Absolutely amazing excellent!

Katy said...

Hey well done! That's a great a project. I know nothing about art, as well you know, but I do like your cover. xx

clergyman said...

Great cover, really suits the book (which is very cool - I have the US version).

Rob Davis said...

I like that. Not what I would have expected from the work I've seen of yours, Paul. Always nice to be surprised by something like that. particularly like those zombies!

paulhd said...

Jason - Why thank you sir.
Katy - Cheers Dr Soar.
Clergy - Ta, not read the book yet, hope to bag a free copy though.
Rob - Thanks. Yeah, not my usual style. I do like to experiment with different styles now and then so as not to get too stale, but I always come back to a more cartoony look.