I've been looking at a lot of pulpy genre artwork for research recently, and am deep in the vibe at the moment. Anyone into this stuff?
Here's a megadump (80+) of mostly trashy pulp horror novel cover art that I find inspiring, anti-aesthetically beautiful, or amusing in one way or another:
https://imgur.com/a/JmOQtfV
Enjoy! And post your favorite pulpy cover art! Whether movies, books, albums, ridiculously stupid or stupid cool.
When it comes to fantasy/horror artwork, this guy has always been my favorite:
https://www.google.com/search?q=frank+frazetta+art&tbm=isch&source=univ&client=firefox-b-1-d&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjZreqZj-TnAhUMcq0KHQpaBZ0QsAR6BAgMEAE&biw=1264&bih=603&dpr=1.25
Frazetta is indeed awesome and legendary! I especially love his colored pencil drawings and watercolors. NO ONE has a bigger corner on the market of voluptuous jungle babe paintings.
shareThat one called “Death Dealer” is an image I think I’ve seen many times. It reminds me of Dungeons and Dragons. I was into D&D, well actually I was more into the artwork than the actual game. I used to love the artwork in many of the early 80’s modules. I had an old opaque projector and I would project the a cool image onto a poster board to get the outline. Then I would spend hours detailing it out. I guess it’s sort of like cheating but so much fun. Do you do any drawings?
shareThat's awesome that you were a D&D guy! I love the idea of D&D but have only actually played a handful of times. My brother and friends and I used to make up our own version of D&D before we'd ever played it for real, based on what we thought it was like. It turns out it wasn't quite in the ballpark, and usually went of the rails into total stupidity. Yes indeed though, I'm way into the aesthetic of oldschool D&D art, and oldschool RPG imagery in general! Stuff from this era is especially my shit:
https://bit.ly/38QRYSb
https://bit.ly/32gPFFC
https://bit.ly/39T76ic
I do draw, yes, in fact I'm doing some drawing right now! I went to art school for undergrad and split it between fine arts (painting mainly) and film.
I’m pretty familiar with the Queen of the Demon Web Pits.
I had a quite similar D&D experience. When we started playing no one knew what they were doing. That was probably due to no one wanting to learn to be the DM, and everyone wanting to be a player. By the time I ever actually played with people who knew what they were doing it just kind of fizzled out. It’s the neat black and white drawings and the stories that have stuck with me all these years.
I love it. It's really cool how D&D brings out a lot of latent creativity and imagination in people. Y'ever still draw?
I've had a thought in the back of my head to try to do a loosely D&Dish text RPG game here on the board somehow. I've seen it done elsewhere with hilarious results, but haven't quite figured out an angle on it yet, and not sure I'd have the time to get it going or if people would be able to get on board, but maybe at some point.
Kind of like the Bard’s Tale of the Commodore 64 days? If you decide to go through with it, you can sign me up for sure. 👍
shareWhy did the doll eat his mother???☹
shareWHY, GOD, WHY?????
shareSo you don't actually read any of these books???
shareHeavens, no! The only ones I've read that I posted are... The Shining and the Lovecraft compilations. A few of these I've seen the movie adaptations of. I don't really have time to read fiction much at all anymore, though I can't deny a few of these are tempting. CRABS: THE HUMAN SACRIFICE! There's actually a whole series of these CRABS books: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/s/guy-n-smith/crabs/
shareAs a related topic, it's interesting how you can almost immediately tell what's the story about from those old covers.
Last week, I was watching a youtube video about how modern horror covers have become so generic that they give you no clue about what's the story about:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOr5ALigmHA
This is cool! The kid has good taste. On the one hand I agree with him and obviously share a love for this style of cover art. At the same time I'm very into transgressing the idiomatic and subverting genre conventions, so I think expressing horror aesthetics in new and unexpected ways is great and important too. In between though, he's on the money in pointing out that most graphic design is trendy, and conventions of the day are followed without much consideration or intent.
shareMmmm... yes and no.
The problem with subverting genre conventions is that it has become an end in itself. Not only in covers, but in art in general. And it shouldn't be that. It should be a consequence of people having some new ideas that go beyond the usual conventions.
When you have people trying to subvert genre conventions for the sake of it, at the end of day what you get is a pile of art that lacks distinctive style and looks strangely similar, the same way random noise textures look similar.
Does that mean that pulp covers should become some kind of mandatory standard? Not at all, but new styles should have some clear idea behind it, not just being new.
During the 80s, for example, there was a trend in European scifi publishing that took inspiration in French and Belgium comic. Here are some examples published in Spain:
https://cloud10.todocoleccion.online/libros-segunda-mano-ciencia-ficcion-fantasia/tc/2016/09/19/09/60742543.jpg
https://cloud10.todocoleccion.online/libros-segunda-mano-ciencia-ficcion-fantasia/tc/2017/10/15/00/100405875.jpg
https://cloud10.todocoleccion.online/libros-segunda-mano-ciencia-ficcion-fantasia/tc/2015/07/04/21/50163520.jpg
https://www.ttrantor.org/mul/4/44029201.jpg
https://www.ebookelo.com/images/cover/50862.jpg
It was different. It was beautiful. It was useful giving info about both the genre and the story. And it had a distinctive style. You can compare for example the covers in Jerry Pournelle, the exact same novel both cases.
this is a pulp original - http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/510BRQVJNCL.jpg
this is a comic inspired version - https://cloud10.todocoleccion.online/libros-segunda-mano-ciencia-ficcion-fantasia/tc/2013/12/06/21/40390671.webp
That's how you subvert conventions.
Yup, I definitely strongly believe clear intent is the most important thing in design. The thing I'm mainly diverging with the Praise of Shadows kid on is the idea that we should necessarily be able to easily identify what genre a novel is by its artwork, which he seems to think is best achieved by one way or another referring to retro pulp idioms. But you're exactly right, there has to be purpose in doing so. That said, I'm personally interested in creativity from a standpoint of disinterest in genre and I believe you can playfully push of the boundaries of idiomatic recognition as a side effect of truly approaching design conceptually, meanwhile it does need to reflect a considered interpretation of the source material.
That said, these are fucking AWESOME. I agree, this is how you subvert conventions! Some of these kind of remind me of Moebius, especially that Neverness one... Is that Moebius? Coincidentally I was just looking at a book of his work earlier today.
https://www.google.com/search?q=moebius&sxsrf=ALeKk016GpHKsx0VoScFzS6qNX87vq-vDA:1582447543601&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiM5Ni9pOfnAhVKRK0KHdoEAHgQ_AUoAXoECBoQAw&biw=805&bih=655
Yeap, I agree that identifying the genre by its artwork shouldn't necessary. However, the artwork should definitely give you some insight about the book. It shouldn't feel like a random pretty image put on the cover.
Of course, as it happens with any language, it's easier to transmit information if you use pre-existing patterns and idioms. That's why pulp covers are so useful conveying information in the horror genre and at the same time, so easy to create: they have been there for years and they have become a standardized language. Trying something new, on the other hand, is far more difficult, since you don't have a pre-existing set of established language patterns.
Moebius was so good because he was able to create a very distinctive style, conveying the feeling of exploration and awesomeness in big scifi words. In a nutshell: he created a new visual language. He's not the only one. Another example is chic-lit novels. They created a wonderful visual language https://williampeaceblog.files.wordpress.com/2018/05/picture-26.png
But creating new languages requires talent. When you try to break the existing language without talent or purpose, you end up with images that don't convey any information... which is a recurrent problem in modern covers. They feel random and exchangeable because they've failed to become part of a language. In short: they say nothing.
CONTINUE
CONTINUE
By the way, conceptual design doesn't really work anymore. The original idea in conceptual art was to hijack an existing language and create a contradiction. If you place an apple in a gallery art, the accepted conventions tells you that this apple must be art because it's placed in a gallery art, and however, it's just a common apple. Here you have a contradiction an that contradiction is the ultimate purpose of this art. It's not the object. It's the concept. However, once the mainstream design becomes conceptual there's no language you can hijack anymore. Nobody is using a language, everybody is trying to be the one that hijacks it.
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The author of the Neverness cover wasn't Moebius. It was Toni Garcés. He was a minor comic author in the 80s/90s, very influenced by Moebius:
https://www.lambiek.net/artists/g/garces_toni.htm
When you try to break the existing language without talent or purpose, you end up with images that don't convey any information... which is a recurrent problem in modern covers.
By the way, conceptual design doesn't really work anymore.