Comments on: The Death Of Book Illustration http://archives.frederatorblogs.com/talk_to_the_snail/2006/08/22/the-death-of-book-illustration/ Mon, 13 Feb 2012 08:25:19 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.3 By: TeeDub http://archives.frederatorblogs.com/talk_to_the_snail/2006/08/22/the-death-of-book-illustration/#comment-313 TeeDub Tue, 22 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://archives.frederatorblogs.com/talk_to_the_snail/2006/08/22/the-death-of-book-illustration/#comment-313 What an interesting thought - I wonder what a modern-day Rackham would look like illustrating for a current thriller novel.<br />I think we don't see book illustration (or, typically, any other illustration) like we used to because the internal imaging process has eaten its own tail. From nothing, to hand-drawn illustrations which show style but leave specific, literal details up to the imagination of the reader, to photo-illustrations which show explicit-down-to-the-last-detail pictures of real people and tell us "this is what the character looks like" in order to establish the marketed property in concrete, back to nothing again. I imagine publishers assume that we already have a photo in our heads of Tom Cruise or Harrison Ford to plug in to the main character role and that trying to engage the imagination differently would be simply irrelevant.<br /><br />Re-reading, I think I come off as being a little more bitter than I actually am. Call it "bitter-sweet", I suppose. Take a James Bond movie poster example. When I compare the colorful, design-crazy imagery of smirking semi-cartoon characters bathing with a pile of hotties or flying mini-copters through impossible sky-scapes of exploding ordnance in the posters for You Only Live Twice (did any of this actually happen in the movie the way it's represented?) to the homogenized steel-blue photo collages of the later Brosnan movies, it definitely makes me yearn for the '60's (even though I was born in the '70's).<br /><br />Speaking of "born in the '70's", how crazy would a really stylishly-illustrated V.C. Andrews book be? That could get really freaky. What an interesting thought - I wonder what a modern-day Rackham would look like illustrating for a current thriller novel.
I think we don’t see book illustration (or, typically, any other illustration) like we used to because the internal imaging process has eaten its own tail. From nothing, to hand-drawn illustrations which show style but leave specific, literal details up to the imagination of the reader, to photo-illustrations which show explicit-down-to-the-last-detail pictures of real people and tell us “this is what the character looks like” in order to establish the marketed property in concrete, back to nothing again. I imagine publishers assume that we already have a photo in our heads of Tom Cruise or Harrison Ford to plug in to the main character role and that trying to engage the imagination differently would be simply irrelevant.

Re-reading, I think I come off as being a little more bitter than I actually am. Call it “bitter-sweet”, I suppose. Take a James Bond movie poster example. When I compare the colorful, design-crazy imagery of smirking semi-cartoon characters bathing with a pile of hotties or flying mini-copters through impossible sky-scapes of exploding ordnance in the posters for You Only Live Twice (did any of this actually happen in the movie the way it’s represented?) to the homogenized steel-blue photo collages of the later Brosnan movies, it definitely makes me yearn for the ’60’s (even though I was born in the ’70’s).

Speaking of “born in the ’70’s”, how crazy would a really stylishly-illustrated V.C. Andrews book be? That could get really freaky.

]]> By: Fred Seibert http://archives.frederatorblogs.com/talk_to_the_snail/2006/08/22/the-death-of-book-illustration/#comment-314 Fred Seibert Tue, 22 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://archives.frederatorblogs.com/talk_to_the_snail/2006/08/22/the-death-of-book-illustration/#comment-314 There was a guy who ran Ted Turner's 'Turner Publishing' who agreed with you Eric. He released a few books with illos, but mostly, like everything else at that company, it didn't do too well. I think it'll take someone doing an everyday edition of Lord of the Rings or something to maybe kick start a new trend. There was a guy who ran Ted Turner’s ‘Turner Publishing’ who agreed with you Eric. He released a few books with illos, but mostly, like everything else at that company, it didn’t do too well. I think it’ll take someone doing an everyday edition of Lord of the Rings or something to maybe kick start a new trend.

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