One of the reasons Ray Harryhausen (7th Voyage of Sinbad) was such a success at animation was that his mentor Willis O’Brien (King Kong) told him to go to art school and study anatomy and he took the advice. Monsters, puppets, book covers and cartoons need to be anatomically realistic.
The boy’s left and right shoulders don’t match and that little girl’s left arm looks stunted. Perhaps if Vardin Village were a home for deformed children, this might work.
I admit I have done bad sketches in my lifetime, but I hope if I were doing a book cover for public consumption, I would polish up my effort.
RK
9 years ago
In fact, the artwork is outright amazing. Unless it’s for a story in which the life and color are literally as well as figuratively being drained from a town (as in a memorable Care Bears episode I recall from my childhood), the cover isn’t really true to the contents, however.
Judging further by the synopsis and mixed reviews at Amazon, the story inside is indeed nowhere near so carefully crafted as the cover art.
RK
9 years ago
In fact, you know what the first thing that occurs to me when I see a cover like this is? It makes me want to slip into my best imitation of the Honest Trailers “Awesome Voice Guy” on YouTube and start making up my own narrative for it on the spot.
“In the sleepy town of Vardin Village… where the color is literally and figuratively draining from everyone’s lives… a hard-bitten angsty teenage boy and his innocent kid sister desperately clinging to their last few scraps of color must enter the deceptively beautiful Monochrome Manor to confront… The Blankening!”
Waffles
9 years ago
Is the the novelization of the movie Pleasentville?
![cover[1]](https://lousybookcovers.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/cover142.jpg)
Well, it’s a really nice drawing. A lot of work went into detailing that house. It’s a shame that it doesn’t cut it as a cover.
Yeah, the artwork isn’t bad. It just doesn’t fit the bill.
The building is nice, but the “human” figures were done by someone who doesn’t have much of an idea of how legs, arms, and hands work.
One of the reasons Ray Harryhausen (7th Voyage of Sinbad) was such a success at animation was that his mentor Willis O’Brien (King Kong) told him to go to art school and study anatomy and he took the advice. Monsters, puppets, book covers and cartoons need to be anatomically realistic.
The boy’s left and right shoulders don’t match and that little girl’s left arm looks stunted. Perhaps if Vardin Village were a home for deformed children, this might work.
I admit I have done bad sketches in my lifetime, but I hope if I were doing a book cover for public consumption, I would polish up my effort.
In fact, the artwork is outright amazing. Unless it’s for a story in which the life and color are literally as well as figuratively being drained from a town (as in a memorable Care Bears episode I recall from my childhood), the cover isn’t really true to the contents, however.
Judging further by the synopsis and mixed reviews at Amazon, the story inside is indeed nowhere near so carefully crafted as the cover art.
In fact, you know what the first thing that occurs to me when I see a cover like this is? It makes me want to slip into my best imitation of the Honest Trailers “Awesome Voice Guy” on YouTube and start making up my own narrative for it on the spot.
“In the sleepy town of Vardin Village… where the color is literally and figuratively draining from everyone’s lives… a hard-bitten angsty teenage boy and his innocent kid sister desperately clinging to their last few scraps of color must enter the deceptively beautiful Monochrome Manor to confront… The Blankening!”
Is the the novelization of the movie Pleasentville?
Nah. Reese Witherspoon is way hotter (and older) than the girl on the cover.