As promised in my previous post, here are a couple more pieces of Mortal Engines concept art by Jaekyung Jaguar Lee; Miss Fang's duel with Valentine at Batmunkh Gompa, and the Guild of Engineers deploying MEDUSA.
One of the things I like about these pictures is that they aren't illustrations of the book - they take the basic ideas and images but change them in all sorts of ways. Jaguar's Anna Fang is nothing at all like my idea of her (where's her big red coat? She'll catch her death...) and the sword fight which, in the book, happens on a quiet and snowy balcony, now takes place in front of a wall of burning airships.
That's exactly the sort of change you could expect to see if anyone ever made an actual movie of the books, and you'd think it would be irritating for an author to have their stuff altered in that way. But it's such a long time since I wrote Mortal Engines that it doesn't really bother me - I'm very pleased that my stuff has inspired Jaguar to create these paintings (I just wish I'd had them to refer to when I was writing the book, because it would have been much better!)
Jaguar has been studying at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA, where his graduation show opens today. I think my favourite of the images he has sent me is his spectacular painting of Airhaven, but in an attempt to generate a bit of bloggery tension, I'm going to hold that over till tomorrow...
3 comments:
"bloggery tension" Sounds like a character from one of your books! Wonderful artwork.
Philip these creations are brilliant! It's a strange feeling, seeing something you've had in your mind for so many years purely going by visual descriptions as opposed to actual imagery, then every now and then seeing a rendition in each artist's interpretation. I remember asking you a couple of years ago how you'd feel about a film adaptation of the books, and it never really occurred to me how much things could be how much could be changed, especially with you being pleased with the changes.
If someone spoke to you tomorrow from a big film company saying they wanted to buy the rights and whatnot, would you go for it? If so, would you want to be an adviser of the input of the film? Similar to how George R Martin works with HBO in the adaptation of his Ice and Fire books
Ha, thanks Justin! And Joshua, I'd still love to see a film adaptation, and of course if they wanted my input that would be great, though my experience of film companies so far is that they just want to buy the rights, then do their own thing. I guess GRR Martin has sold a lot more books than I have, so, as with the Harry Potter series, the film/TV makers feel that there are legions of fans whom they need to keep on board by treating the material with respect - not really the case with my stuff! (Though I must confess that I HATED the one Ice & Fire book I managed to drag myself to the end of - I doubt they could change it enough to make me watch the TV version.)
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