A duo of weeks ago , The Folio Societyreally waste our mind with the graphics for their variant of Philip K. Dick ’s The Man In The High Castle . late , we had a fortune to natter with the edition ’s artist , Shan Jiang , and we got to check out some exclusive art that was n’t used for the Scripture .
io9 : Your artwork for The Man In The High Castle was terrific . What was your approach to putting together the artwork for this ledger ?
Shan Jiang : Thanks . My feeler was starting with the cover first , then the frontispiece . After coif down the mind for these two illustrations , the accompany ones came out quite swimmingly .
The cover was quite a job , at first I did n’t really have a clear way in brain . After deliver a treatment with the Folio Society Art Director Sheri Gee , I start to construct a picture bit - by - routine of the atmospheric state I wanted to create and the best dash for the book . I feel the cover is an ‘ abstract ’ or ’ program ’ rather than a specific shot . Although the artistic creation vogue was a slimly different — a bit more pictorial than inside pages — the right air was there for me to carry through to the rest of the illustrations .
io9 : What was your relationship with the record ? Had you take it before ?
Shan : I had n’t read this book before . The only Philip K. Dick work I had read was ‘ Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep ’ when I was in the high schooling . I remember that experience was n’t as pleasurable as I had desire . Perhaps because I was expecting something dissimilar before reading it . So I did n’t read any of his other piece of work until I get this commission . I found the book really , really interesting and I really cut into into it . But , I mean if I read it when I was 15 , I am not sure if I would have liked it .
io9 : state me a trivial about your process .
Shan : I read the whole book twice during the project . The first clock time I read at a normal rate , follow the storyline . Once I got the estimation I started to mould on the cover .
While I weigh the cover as a curriculum , The Man in the High Castle has many storyline and characters and I needed to pick up the elements which reflect the overall atmosphere rather of single secret plan or reference . I instantaneously felt that I should produce a ‘ high castle ’ not only representing the title , but also visualising something that almost every reader would have in judgement when reading the novel . rather of finding a real object from the story , I create something that I think has a symbolic signification . Also I want it to be secret – that area in between real and surreal . Later I develop the ‘ high castle ’ image as a pattern for the slipcase inspire by traditional Japanese emblems .
The second matter I started to work on was the frontispiece . It was not used as the frontispiece in the book but later , at the editor ’s suggestion , we travel it to appear as the first example . The style I used for the cover is more graphic and inspired by vintage comic book of account and illustrations from old - fashion investigator stories . I want to develop the atmosphere by using a different style and I created a picture based on the description of the city where the all the stories happen in the first chapter .
Once I finished the frontispiece , I read the book again . This meter is not really for the storyline but looking closely at the history of each of the characters . ab initio I planed to do one illustration for each case ( or their plot line ) . So I did 10 rough sketches for covering the characters although there were only to be 8 in the book . The two extra ace are for My Baynes ( instance the scene when he convey off the rocket ) and Mr and Mrs Kasoura when they were welcoming Mr Childan into their flat . subsequently for reason to do with the positioning of the illustrations in the book of account we could n’t habituate these two .
For the process of drawing the illustrations I did really rough sketches first and once the idea was approved , I take up to do the origin art . I used playpen , pencil , and also used wacom tablet for some of the parts of the illustration . Then I read in the line nontextual matter into computer and coloured it in digitally .
Image credit : The Folio Society
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