I’m really pleased that so many backers have made time to share their preferences regarding the art of Steam Highwayman: Highways and Holloways. I’ve just finished a phone conversation with Ben, in which we discussed the results of this poll:
You know by now that I love a graph. Well, out of the eight options I gave backers (and you can see featurettes of the passages below…) there was a clear winner: everyone wants to see a velosteam chase, with constables astride their Imperial road engines. Ben and I are both really happy about this: it’ll give him the chance to work with some of the other designs for the velosteam that he created last year. Will an Imperial velosteam include some of those features? I’m as excited to find out as you are.
We’re also going ahead on a feature of Captain Coke as our second full-page illustration. He’s been an intriguing character throughout the writing of the book and I’ve enjoyed inventing him. To see him take on flesh will be even more interesting…
The other options won’t disappear. They’ll be developed as other options for illustrating the book, but may turn out as quarter or half-pages, depending on how successful the images seem once Ben’s had a go with them. As soon as I mentioned punt jousting Ben grabbed a pencil and began to laugh, so I’ve certainly got hopes for that one…
It’s a great day here at Steam Highwayman tower: fully funded this afternoon and Ben delivered a finished cover too. I’m really pleased with his work and very proud to be able to share it with my kickstarter backers. It’s been a complex cycle of brief, editing and work-through, but I reflected earlier that without Ben, my own image of the Steam Highwayman, as well as the look of the whole project, would be entirely different. I’m so grateful to be able to inject a fresh look into Steampunk by partnering with him, as well as receiving these excellent book covers that turn heads wherever they’re seen!