Book covers are in place to grab the reader’s attention, to give them a glimpse into the world they are reading, and a work of art. Illustrators can be one individual that was paid to work on the cover or they could be a group of people working for the publisher. More often they are people at the publishing company creating the work and the actual artist is unknown. On rare occasions the author themselves will design the book cover. In the case of our book we see a wide variety in just a few titles.

There are books, such as the Spectrum series, magazines such as Image FX, Fantasy, and various other publications that showcase both author’s works, and artist works in their magazines.


spacerat.jpgIn the case of Michael Daley’s book Space Rat we see an illustrator by the name of Ashley Mims a relatively unknown artist doing the cover work for Daley’s book. Her website with various other works can be found at http://www.ashley-mims.com/index.html.

orbits.jpgPJ Haarsma is an author famous for his Softwire series; this has drawn attention and has inspired game designers as well as artists. He collaborated with his wife who is a known science fiction artist. Her works can be found here http://www.marisagrieco.com/.

mengine.jpgPhilip Reeve’s Mortal Engine titles cover work was done by artist David Frankland. He specializes in book covers and illustrations, working for a company that hires out artists to publishers. His works are colorful and fit well into the science fiction universe, his portfolio can be found here, http://www.artistpartners.com/portfolios/david_frankland/.


In the case of Adam Rex, he is one of those authors that is also an illustrator. He works as both an author and illustrator on his own titles, but also illustrates for other authors, and even creating illustration only books. He has even worked for famous companies such as Wizards of The Coast. For a complete list of his works visit his Wikipedia page, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Rex.

Scott Westerfeld worked with illustrator Keith Thompson on his Levitation and Behemoth books; they created over 50 illustrations for the books and were placed throughout the book to provide the reader with some fantastic art to go along with the stories. Here is one of the images from the book:

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