Friday, August 8, 2008

The New Jim Baen's Universe Cover Artist

Well, that's me! I hardly believe it myself! It's astounding! It's fantastic! It's startling!

Here's December 2008's cover. I chose to feature legendary writer Ben Bova's Moon Race. I'll make a few more tweaks on it before publication, but this is the basic idea:


The piece is very much inspired by the works of the 1940's-50's sc-fi and fantasy pulp magazine artists. I was born too late to get the pulps off the newstands, but I am lucky to know them through second hand finds and printed collections. I spent many happy hours in my youth dreaming of the far away worlds those classic magazines provided such thrilling glimpses of.
I still do. I have to pinch myself now that I am the guy doing the covers for an amazing magazine like Jim Baen's Universe! It's a childhood dream come true.

I'm now working on the cover for the upcoming October 2008 issue. The art will feature Mike Resnick's very moving story, Article of Faith. It looks like this will be a regular gig for for a while, I can hardly wait to see what future stories I will get to homage in cover art! I'm so freaking happy I'm going to dance the 'Eagle Rock' all up and down the docks! "Everyone in for the Eagle Rock!" (Dances the 'Eagle Rock' Be glad there is no video.)

It still boggles my mind. I get to make moon walkers and androids for the covers of a popular sci-fi and fantasy magazine that has all the magic of the wonderful pulps of yore, and more. What a lucky life.

Postscript: I neglected to thank my friend Dennis A. Martin for making a 3-D model of the walker based on my sketches. His version forms the base of the image you see here- I think it's time I learned how to use that 3-D stuff! Thank you, Dennis!

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Grantville Gazette Ad

Hail Friends,

A while back Paula asked me if I could whip up a last minute ad for the Grantville Gazette to go in the Liberty Con booklet. Since our fearless leader Eric Flint was the guest of honor it would be a good idea to have something in there! I only had 48 hours to get it done but I came through, whew! After the dust settled I took another look at what I'd done and thought we could get some more mileage out of it. I made a few changes, added another Gustav fighter (my version of the premiere warplane of the 163x-verse) and sent it off to Paula who liked it. :-) My hope is it will soon be pointing the way to the Gazette from here and there around the web.


This is just too much fun.

Garrett W. Vance