Titan Books seeks book cover artists

Titan Books has put out an open call to recruit book cover illustrators for their future fiction titles.

The call appeared this week on the new blog of Titan’s revamped website and Twitter feed asking if their fans and readers “want to be the next Chris Foss?”

The opportunity comes on the back of an announcement that Titan will be continuing to expand its fiction range in 2011, with new science fiction and fantasy series such as T.S. Church’s RuneScape, the art for which appears as the masthead for the online recruitment call.

• Interested artists are requested to send five low res pieces of their work with a brief CV and cover letter to illustration@titanemail.com

• For full info visit: http://titanbooks.com/blog/wanted-book-cover-illustrators/

Corel's Quest for the Best Challenge

'The Calm Before the Storm', SciFi Art Now contributor John Malcolm's entry for Corel's contest.

Illustrators in North America, the UK and Germany still lhave time to both enter software maker Corel's Quest for the Best Creativity Challenge.

The challenge is part of the company's 25th aniversary celebrations: their way of saying thank you to all of their customers, partners and employees who have helped them grow from a tiny startup in Ottawa, Canada, to a global software company with customers on virtually every continent.

The Quest for the Best Creativity Challenge is offering over $25,000 in prizes in a search for the next great digital artists. Entrants, whose work is initially judged by popular, registered vote and then by a panel of professional judges, could win the ultimate design studio (valued at $9,500 US), a Nikon D700 SLR camera, a Wacom Cintiq tablet, an iPad, a Flip UltraHD Camcorder or other great prizes.

Current entrants include ace artist and SciFi Art Now contributor John Malcolm, whose 'Calm Before the Storm' is a fun piece of fantasy art.

Corel are posting a regularly updated 'Most Liked Overall' gallery on the contest web site, as well as daily favourites and most recent entries.

Artists should simply enter your best illustration, painting or image made with Corel software before 31st August 2010 for a chance to win. Anyone who wants to vote for their favourite art in the competition needs to register on the site - and anyone eligible to vote is in with the chance to win for a chance to win one of 10 HP Mini Netbooks.

The contest is open to residents of the United States, Canada (excluding the province of Quebec), the United Kingdom and Germany only.

• Visit www.corelquestforthebest.com for full contest details

Sci-Fi Art Now Covers Revealed

ILEX Press have released the covers for their UK and US editions of SciFi Art Now - and they look superb.

The UK cover, above, is by the brilliant World Fantasy Award winner and Hugo Award-nominated artist John Picacio. This art was first seen gracing the cover of Pyr Books brilliant SF anthology Fast Forward 2, but you'll have seen his art on many book covers for a huge range of publishers including Subterranean Press, Golden Gryphon Press, Pyr, and Star Trek novels for Pocket Books. (The tryptych he did for their Terok Nor trilogy back in 2008 is just knockout).

John tells me he's honoured to be on the cover and likewise, I'm grateful to Pyr Books editor Lou Anders for putting me in touch with John: I've admired his work for ages, and I'm very grateful he gave us permission to use his work.

The US cover is artwork created specifically for SciFi Art Now by Brighton-based artist Steve Sampson, who I first encountered back in the 1990s when he provided me many covers for the Marvel UK weekly comic, Overkill.

Working with Ghy Kurabayashi, Steve is well known for combining their illustration and graphic design skills with their love of colours, manga, games, vinyl toys, comics, music, pop, urban art and all things Japanese!

Also known as Sampson Art, their clients include ILEX Press, Barnes & Noble and Brazil's Editora Abril. Their manga illustrations are sold worldwide through Getty Images.

"I'm almost lost for words," Steve told me on learning his art, titled Stone Fish, was being considered for the book's cover. "That's stunning news and a great honour – I couldn't be more excited!

"I really enjoyed doing the image and it was well worth taking the time and thought to do something
specifically for the book."

• SciFi Art Now is on course for publication in October 2010.