Adventures of a Pixel Painter

Recently I have been doing a lot of graphic work, pushing pixels into shapes and images (is it really a painting without paint, or are pixels the paint media – ah art philosophy – is the art in the painting or the painting?) that I hope help sell my stories (both in a illustrative and advertising sense). I’m slowly assembling the manuscript for “Ironmaster & Other Tales” and polishing the images as I go, turning

This sort of thing

into:

This much improved version

But while I was doing that I noticed an email from the Sweat, tears and digital-ink, the excellent blog of MG Mason which sent me to this post. However the original cover was not right, the shadows were incorrect, the numbers were flat and the text was dodgy. It bugged me, so I fixed it for him… and not only did he prefer my version, but he has even given me an illustrator credit 🙂

Here’s the fixed version of the image… Wish I had kept the original for a comparison now

As for the book, it releases very, very soon and I can tell you is an enjoyable romp through a very British zombie apocalypse, even down to a cricket bat, which if I had read the book before working on the cover would have appeared prominently. Its not just a running gag, it’s practically a character.

I’ll be writing a longer review later for the launch, but I thought I should mention it now while you can pre-order still…