So, hopefully within the week I’ll unveil the new, custom-designed look of The New Sleekness, featuring the return of widgets and social media content. In the meantime, here’s a small preview:

This is the final iteration of my Little Brother piece. I’ve re-worked the Camera-Head, and added some more detail to its blazer. In the end, as soon as I realized that I was designing a poster (for myself) as opposed to a mass market book cover (for the particular needs of the mass market), I decided to leave the idea of a textural background aside. For similar reasons, I’ve also replaced the Neil Gaiman blurb with the book’s tag-line, and integrated the arphid graphic from the spine of the cover design.

I’m diggin’ it.

Tomorrow, I’ll go get myself some ink and figure out the separations. I’ll get the seps printed on Friday morning, and hopefully will be in the print shop at Pratt by mid-afternoon. I’m itching to get back in there—it’s been way too long. . . . 

Here’s an in-progress shot of the block for the relief print I’m working on based on Tobias S. Buckell’s most excellent new novel, Sly Mongoose. It’s changed substantially from the original sketch, mostly because I’ve decided to treat is as a comic-style splash page, and include some of the dialogue from the scene I’m depicting in the space above the figure.

Here’s a progression of that Little Brother sketch I put up a few days ago. This is what happens when I have a weekend to myself. I’ve had lots of fun putting this together, particularly including little easter eggs (hints: run the binary through a translator; check out the ‘maker’s brand’ on the arphid on the spine, etc.). It’s not done—there’s still much work to be done on Mr. ‘Camera Head’, and I feel like it needs some textural elements, possibly in the background. Myabe a city-scape? Some DHS-type seals or other government type printed matter? Who knows, I’m still turning it over in my head.

Most likely this will not be used for the actual cover, but in any case the feedback so far has been good, so I’ll definitely be making silkscreen prints of it at some point.

New print in the works, here’s a concept sketch, playing around with the layout. It’s inspired by the first chapter of Sly Mongoose, Tobias S. Buckell’s new novel, which can be found here. The book opens with Pepper, the main character, dropping like a stone into the atmosphere of Chilo, with only a handmade heatshield and an armored spacesuit to protect him.