books

I have all my highlighted character descriptions in my database. not very organised (other than by character) but if it's useful for anyone else..

the book being the way it is, there's definitely descriptions that are ambigious or that i just missed because of everything going on. but there's also things i changed here because of artistic coherency and I want to note those down

On stage is Demetrius and Ludovico at the end of The Lilies Wretched, the opera Elspeth invites Mallory to (The second relevant one)

Ludovico is described as being covered in gems and gold which I. didn't quite do. in my defense theyre so small and half covered by the text and I didn't have a vision of how that'd look in context of the vibe of the opera narrative etc

On the balconies is left: Sorav, and vaguely Florian? Though there isn't much description of him other than clean shaven, tall, white uniform. I think I imagine him with dark hair, but it's light here for behind-text-contrast reasons.

on the right: Elspeth and the Chancellor (who I didn't think too hard about designing, he's very generic man here lmao).

The two faceless people on the lowest points are just random, to fill the gap.

(oh, and we all know who is at the very top. self explanatory)

Middle:

Mallory's suit is lavender, I just could not get purple to work with the colour palette. So it's more pink. I also combined the tophat/feather boutonniere situation with this, even though those are separate outfits.

(Same with Ostlerfell Blue - I wanted to include this in the upper section, but it didn't work with the palette. So the closest we have is Elspeth's teal-ish dress.)

Bottom:

The Contriver Worm is more black and hairy, and I'm pretty sure larger (I'm pretty sure one section 'could shield a horse'?), but again. compositional/colour palette reasons.

When Guy first encounters it he's dangling mid air and it grabs him, no time to react let alone get out his pesticide gun thing

I pretty much decided to do the alt art on the back purely so I could draw Three, hence why she has her helmet up to show her face. She wouldn't have her wooden arm outside of her suit either, but I wanted to show that also.

The exterminator outfits - I went slightly more steampunk fantasy than is probably canon. But it looks cool?

I can't remember if there's like, solid description of what the suits are like beyond 'threaded with iron vine and plated with woody alloys', boots, overcoat, buckled collar, plates on shoulders, 'wraps his iron-vine arms around his waist', I remember tetrapod chestplates being mentioned though that might have been post-BGS ? Anyway, obviously took bits and pieces but it's not entirely accurate to this.

I assume the glass visors are flat, but I wanted to make them bug eye shaped. The little bumps on the top are meant to be reminiscent of antennae, though I decided actually adding long antennae would be impractical even if fun. I also double checked and i think it's amber glass - green glass was the tender guardsman helmets, i just absorbed that wrong.

There's simple harnesses on the suits - though they would probably have chest harnesses & descenders & more gear for prusiking but I simply couldn't be bothered drawing all that or figuring it out with the armour.

Remembered to add their swords last minute so that isn't on the mockup versions lol

Overall:

If I had the time/refererence/was being paid for this I'd pay more attention to having some distinct differences between pre and post Revival architecture and fashion. My historical architecture/fashion knowledge is not that in depth so it's kinda vibes based. But also the book is intentionally a mashup of influences, so.

There are so many tiny bugs in the details of this, not that you can see most of them probably. I thought about putting more effort into designing some of the various vermin that are mentioned, but I didn't want to make them big enough that they'd be extra compositional elements.

my very first sketch when I had this idea just after I read it last year. The general concept was having an hourglass/infinity shape - I guess similar to the ouroboros on the cover, but with two sections for the two parts of the story....

I also didn't plan for it to be a cover design immediately, but for once I realised that was a good idea while I was making the art and designed it accordingly.

I took inspiration for the stage from a lot of vintage paper/puppet show stages. I hadn't even figured out which opera scene would be going on the stage, I had to reread it to find one lmao. thankfully my vague memory of a dramatic stabbing was correct

once I got to a certain stage I also stopped to figure out character designs a bit more! And yes I will finish those at some point...... not immediately though. I will make some changes from where they are there, but it was enough to figure out what I needed for the cover illustration.

ALSO: no promises I'll get around to working on these, but since I started a redesign, why not do some speculative other elements of a special edition......these are my thoughts for endpapers & case (VERY rough)

since the cover is so detailed I'm thinking simpler concepts. detailed viseral bug illustration on the endpapers. 'embroidered' case in the style of mallory's embroidery - maybe with the ouroboros centipede and planty/mycelium grows (and of course little red stringy bugs) on the cover, and mallory's embroidered map on the back? not sure if it'd be on brown or dark green. mayyybe hints of silver foil liquid splattered across it somewhere.

I also have an idea for sprayed edges (also simpler) and maybe some internal vignettes. again idk if i'll get to that