Young Bond in Cyberspace

No new pictures for you, just wanted to say thanks to zencat aka John Cox at The Young Bond Dossier for posting my recent SilverFin cover on the Danger Society News section. As it's now the official source for all Young Bond related news the cover also appeared on both the Official Young Bond site and Ian Fleming website.

If this wasn't enough exposure John also made fans at CommanderBond.net aware of my efforts. The response in the forum there was really positive, so thanks to everyone out there who left a message, and thanks again to John.

The cover has also turned up at illustrated 007 which is really nice as this is one of the places I went looking to try and capture a feel for Bond style. Anyone looking for a fantastic collection of 007 themed imagery should head straight there.

James Bond will return to this blog... just not sure how soon that will be.

Silverfin (part 5) Silverfinished

Here's the final piece with all the retro styled type, along with the stains, scuffs and creases you tend to get if you've been hanging around since 1933.

Below are some of the alternative layouts I considered for the cover.

One final bit of nonsense before calling a halt to all things Bondish and eelish, is a sketch I did for a different version of the Silverfin type. My thinking was - no book jacket can have enough eels, so here's one acting as the 'S' and ready to feed on the 'i'. Pretty stupid looking and glad I didn't finish it, but I sort of missed him from the finished piece so he gets to have the final place here.

Silverfin (part 4) Electric-blue eels

Above, my final digital paint job on my Silverfin sketch, and below how I got there. The pencil sketch was scanned, taken into Photoshop and given a wash of colour. From here on I took it into Painter where a lot of chunky oil pastel was used. A final bit of colour adjustment was done in Photoshop.

Silverfin (part 3) Pencils

The digital sketches from my previous post served as the guide for the more detailed pencil sketch above.


Other than the book's description, the look of my thirteen year old James Bond was inspired a little by the features of a young Christian Bale. Daniel Cervoni in his article at Alternative 007 (suggesting Bale as a possible future screen Bond) points out a certain resemblance between Bale and a sketch of the character commissioned by Fleming.


The other useful thing about Bale is that he was a child star and therefore there are lots of photo references of him at a similar age to the character in Silverfin.



Though I wanted my final rendering of Algar to leave most of his figure obscured I felt I should know what I was obscuring to begin with. Most of this was based on Higson's description of Algar from the book.

"... it wasn't a man's face . . . It was an eel's face, a nightmare face; chinless, with smooth, grey, utterly hairless skin pulled tight across it, and fat, blubbery lips that stretched almost all the way back to where the ears should be. The front of the face was deformed, pushed forward, so that the nose was hideously flattened, with splayed nostrils, and the bulging eyes were forced so wide apart that they didn't look in any way human."

"Algar was taller than Randolph though stooped over. His arms were enormous, and great knots of swollen muscle showed through his thin, filthy shirt [...] the nose was flattened and stretched, the teeth had separated and the eyes had curved round almost to the side of his head. The eyes were almost the worst part. They were dark and wet, and James saw in them, not murder, but sadness and pain."

The reference to Algar's face being 'an eel's face' meant first thing to do was take a look at some... eels. Clever huh?

I felt the design should also fit the retro concept. Much of Higson's description (especially those blubbery lips and bulging eyes) could equally be used for many of the fish men that featured in the pulp works and B movies from the 30s to 60s, which helped with this.

Illustrated fishmen through the ages: from left, Edd Cartier, Reynold Brown and Frank Frazetta

The final bit of inspiration came from the bulge and stretch effects on my Mac's Photo Booth program. I took some distorted shots of myself - spliced them together and painted them in Photoshop, digitally making myself up as Algar. There I am below - ain't I a looker.

Silverfin (part 2) Barrels of eels

The two sketches above (made in Painter and Photoshop) formed my eventual solution for my alternative Silverfin cover. The idea of the eels surrounding the main character came from... well the fact that the plot revolves around an evil scheme involving killer eels, but also I wanted some visual signature that would foreshadow or allude to the James Bond we know. Initially I didn't know what that visual cue might be. A great place to look for all things illustrative of Bond is illustrated 007, but even a quick glance here reveals the fact that most of our visual references to Bond come from the Eon film series. For me the most iconic of those is the gun barrel image.



Originally designed by Maurice Binder for the opening sequence of Dr No (1962), it went on to become a recognisable logo for the franchise being adapted and exploited for advertising and merchandising.



As a child I never read the design as a gun barrel (hadn't looked looked down too many thankfully). The only thing it reminded me of was the shutter on our family camera. It always seemed to me a bit of a harsh way for Mr Bond to treat someone who just wanted a photo, but I suppose those hunted by the paparazzi might disagree. The point I was trying to make anyway is that the spiral effect caused by the rifling can be interpreted in a number of ways, being seen in everything from a camera shutter to natural forms such as whirlpools and hurricanes and perhaps even the swarming of killer eels? Hopefully this would also not offend Eon productions who hold the copyright for the gun barrel - but presumably not on nature's spiral.


The strange looking figure just behind Bond in my sketches came about because I felt there needed to be some other element of threat in the composition. I also really liked the feel of this Doc Savage cover with something looming menacingly behind the good doctor.

Interestingly this 'they're behind you' visual convention went on to be used in a number of Bond illustrations, which meant the idea seemed to tie in to the 007 'look'.





The character of Algar in Silverfin seemed like ideal material for some ominous looming. He's an ambiguous character, physically monstrous, he seems at first the main threat of the novel but remains in the shadowy background of the story only emerging in the third act to reveal his true character. I thought any treatment of him should not be detailed, perhaps almost be in silhouette, keeping his look and intentions mysterious, much as Frazetta did with his creature in this Buck Rogers cover (below). I'll get on to the trouble I had with Algar in another post.

Silverfin (part 1) Bond... Young Bond

While doing my 'research' into children's books last year I came across Charlie Higson's Young Bond Series. In his presentation of a 13 year old spy-to-be, Higson has stayed true to the timeline of Flemings original novels by setting it in the 1930s. You wouldn't know this from looking at the UK paperback cover for the first of the novels - Silverfin (above). It looks very contemporary, no doubt designed to appeal to that hard to reach market of young teen males and particularly readers of modern boy-Bond Alex Rider.

Anyway, I thought it might be an interesting project to redesign the cover, bringing in some 30s styling and and yet trying to make it look like something a 21st century audience might want to read.

The book itself is a brilliantly written adventure. Many of the set pieces, involving creepy castles, Etonian school sporting events, and tree climbing sound like they come from the pages of an antiquated Boy's Own adventure story. Higson gives it all a hard edged spin however, doing for the genre what Casino Royale did for the Bond film series.

It's rare to feel a main character is under real threat even in an adult thriller, but I felt it whilst reading Silverfin, despite the fact you know Bond has to survive into adulthood. I doubt I'd get that feeling reading the actual boy's adventure stories from the period. Nevertheless I thought the covers of The Boy's Own Paper of that time along with similar titles such as the American Open Road for Boys, would be a good place to start developing a look for my version of the cover.



My second avenue of visual research was suggested by the book's mention of young James' own reading material - "He got his book out of his suitcase; it was the latest Bulldog Drummond adventure story". It's a nice reference for Bond fans as fictional Private Detective Hugh 'Bulldog' Drummond is seen by many as a 'proto- James Bond'. Apparently Ian Fleming also acknowledged Drummond as an influence on his creation.



The 'latest Bulldog Drummond' featured in Silverfin would have been 'The Return of Bulldog Drummond', published in 1932. I couldn't find a 1st edition image of the cover, only the 1950s reprint above, which I didn't find too inspiring. One thing that did come out of the researching Drummond was the fact he was also supposedly an influence on American Pulp hero Doc Savage.

I'd been aware of the original 30s Doc Savage covers for a while and particularly liked the work done for them by 'king of pulps' Walter Baumhofer. Looking back at them again it was interesting to see how often Doc got himself into some underwater peril on these covers. Considering the aquatic nature of much of Bond's adventures in Silverfin, I thought these might be of help.


So I had examples of the visual vocabulary I wanted to play with, all I needed now was an idea.

Spock

All things Star Trek reign this week - so here's my version of a much loved Vulcan, done while testing some brushes in Painter on Sunday.