Fantastic Art: An Interview with Vincent Chong

I first became aware of the work of British fantasy artist Vincent Chong a few years ago, during the time when I was running the website and looking after the marketing side of things for PS Publishing and I've been a huge fan ever since.

The first piece of his work I encountered was the absolutely gorgeous wrap-around covers for Joe Hill's long sold-out and much sought-after debut collection Twentieth Century Ghosts (see below for front panel artwork) and ever since then, PS head honcho Pete Crowther has asked Vincent to supply a steady stream of cover images for his titles.

He's not the only publisher to have taken note, either, as Vincent's work now graces an ever-growing range of book covers from various UK and US independents, including Subterranean Press, Pendragon Press and Screaming Dreams.

For the past two years Vincent has won the British Fantasy Award for Best Artist - in the process ending a five-year run of wins by one of my other very favourite artists, Les Edwards - a clear indication of his growing stature and popularity among the UK's genre fiction fans.

The aspect of Vincent's work that has always most impressed me is his incredible use of texture and tone to create a disquieting, almost menacing mood in his pieces. As a result his work tends to be imbued with a genuinely haunting, unsettling, atmosphere that always suits the books he works with perfectly.

Take a look at these examples of his art and design work and then visit the galleries at www.vincentchong-art.co.uk for many more examples:

I dropped Vincent a line and put a few questions to him about his work and this is what he told me:

DT: You've developed a wonderful signature style full of muted, swirling colours, shadow and darkness, that clearly draws inspiration from a wide range of sources. Who, or what, are your major influences? Who are your favourite artists, authors, film directors?

Vincent Chong: When I was younger I was really into the Amercian superhero style of comic art and Fantasy artists such as Boris Vallejo and Luis Royo, which I've now moved away from a bit. These days I'm more inspired by comic artists like Ashley Wood and Ben Templesmith, and recently I've been drawn to Mike Mignola's more graphic style. I also really loved HR Giger's nightmarish imagery and the surreal compositions of Salvador Dali. A major influence is the work of Dave McKean, whose mixed-media approach played a big part in inspiring my own style.

Aside from various artists I also draw inspiration from photography, album packaging design, music videos, movie posters, and movies themselves. The photography and music videos of Floria Sigismondi (who did some early Marilyn Manson videos) were an influence early on. My favourite film director is Jean Pierre Jeunet, the French director of Amelie and Delicatessen and I also love the work of Tim Burton and Guillermo Del Toro. All three have a very strong visual style and create fantastical worlds in their films that suck you in.

DT: What sort of production techniques do you employ? Do you have a preference for digital or analog methods? Or do you find that a blend of the two produces the most effective results?

Vincent Chong: I put together all my final artwork digitally, but typically, in the process of creating a piece of art, I employ various other methods of working as well. I use a lot of photography , but also combine it with drawn and painted elements and scanned-in found objects and created textures. Sometimes I also make sculptural elements that I then photograph and incorporate into an image.

So it's not so much having a preference for either digital or analog methods, but using a mixture of both to achieve the result I want. For me, the advantages of putting together the final image digitally, is that it gives me greater scope to experiment, as a lot of the time it's easier and quicker to change things around digitally.

DT: You've already illustrated book covers for some of the biggest names in genre fiction. But are there any authors whose work you haven't been asked to interpret yet that you'd particularly like to illustrate in the future?

Vincent Chong: I've been very fortunate that I've had the chance to illustrate the works of some great authors. I was a big fan of Stephen King's books when I was growing up and never thought that one day I'd actually be illustrating his work. But now, I think I'm more keen to have the opportunity to one day illustrate something that I've written myself. I've enjoyed interpreting the work of various authors, but I would like to be able to illustrate something entirely of my own creation. I've had the beginnings of ideas in the past, but haven't ever written anything properly, so I don't even know if this is something I could do, but I'd like to give it a try one day...

DT: You're best known as a cover artist and that's clearly keeping you very busy. But are there any other avenues that you're keen to explore? Any other media that you'd be interested in working in down the line?

Vincent Chong: I'd love to do more artwork and design for album packaging and maybe do some work for the film industry – either with movie posters or concept art. I've done a few projects creating artwork for websites - for online games and book trailers and such - which were quite interesting to do, as the artwork had to be animated which provided different challenges from doing the usual print stuff, so I wouldn't mind exploring the multimedia avenue more. I'd also like to explore photography further. I use a lot of photography in my illustration work now anyway, but I'd like to try doing some more straight-forward photography without as much digital manipulation.

I always thought it'd be cool to do get the chance to be a film-maker, but I think it's one of those ideas that sounds great in my head, but in practice I'm not sure how much I'd enjoy it, and it's not an area that I have much knowledge in at the moment, so it's not something I'm particularly focusing on right now, but in the future, who knows?

DT: How has winning the British Fantasy Award for Best Artist for the last two years affected your profile? Have any commissions come about as a direct result?

Vincent Chong: It's hard to know if any commissions have come about directly as a result of the awards wins, but I think it's definitely helped to raise my profile around the world and bring attention to my work to those who had never heard of me before. I've noticed a steady increase in the traffic to my website over the last couple of years, and I've been getting more enquiries and commissions, so it seems that there's been a growing awareness of my work, and I think the awards wins helps to establish my reputation a bit more.

DT: What do you think are going to be the major challenges facing fantasy artists in the next 5 or 10 years? And what do you think are the major opportunities?

Vincent Chong: With the current economic situation around the world, I think there's always going to be some worry about whether artists will be able to find work, especially as I think it's quite easy for publishers to turn more to cheaper alternatives, such as creating artwork in-house or using stock photography.

However, with the web and new technologies I think there are more and more opportunities for artists to exploit these days. It's getting easier for artists to get their work out there and seen by a large worldwide audience with faster internet speeds and the increasing ways to showcase work online – through blogs, online gallery and community art sites, as well as the various social networking sites. And with ever improving print-on-demand services as well, it opens up the opportunity for artists to self-publish as another avenue to get their work out there.

I also think new artists are adapting to the new technology and software available to them and it's no longer the case that, for example, an illustrator would just be creating material for print, but they may also cross over into other areas as well, such as providing content for websites or other media.

Many thanks indeed to Vincent for taking the time away from his creative work to answer those questions and for his permission to borrow some of the images from his gallery, all of which remain copyright (c) Vincent Chong, of course.

Do be sure to visit www.vincentchong-art.co.uk and check out Vincent's portfolio.

Highly Recommended Reading: 'White Night' by Jim Butcher

A new instalment of The Dresden Files? Gimme!

White Night went straight to the top of the 'to be read' pile as soon as I opened the packet from Orbit and I ended up leaving barely a few hours between finishing the rather superb Last Argument of Kings and plunging headlong into the latest rip-roaring adventures of gumshoe-wizard-detective turned magical-guardian-of-Chicago, Harry Dresden.

And in this, the eight book in what's rapidly turning into my favourite long-running series of all time, I found author Jim Butcher to be in rather excellent form, and no mistake.

I'm not going to summarise the narrative, because there's a lot of back-story and sub-plot in White Night that has been carefully lain down in earlier parts of the series that I'd pretty much have to re-cap the whole lot to-date. Instead, I recommend that you nip out and buy, beg or borrow all eight books, then settle down for a good, long read. You should be able to get through them all in a weekend if you really put your mind to it, eh?

I will say, though, that I'm really very pleased indeed with the way the series as a whole is still growing and changing; accreting new layers of meaning and detail with each new book. There can be a risk, with these multi-episodic narrative ventures, that the author's initial enthusiasm will wane, or a particular element of the storyline will come to dominate the narrative; I'm thinking of the way the soft porn aspect of Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series came to dominate and drown out most other facets of the series at round about the same stage in its development.

Not so with our man Jim Butcher and our demi-hero Harry Dresden. In White Night, there's enough in the way of ongoing continuity to provide a warm glow of familiarity for regular readers, without any of the major themes or incidents feeling too repetitious or worn-thin. In particular, this tale is blessed with the return of several favourite minor characters, some of whom haven't been seen for at least a couple of the preceding volumes.

At the same time, though, Jim Butcher has continued to expand upon his milieu, for instance with some fairly significant revelations about the state of the global situation vis-a-vis the power struggles ongoing in the supernatural spheres. He's also continuing to develop - in subtle, but significantly ways - the character of protagonist and first-person narrator Harry Dresden; ensuring that the guy remains interesting and edgy, despite eight volumes' worth of growing reader familiarity.

All of which bodes well for the twelve volumes of The Dresden Files that Jim Butcher tells us he still plans to write. He's put down plenty of potential plot-seeds and possibilities in White Night and I look forward to seeing how they blossom and bloom (bless Orbit, they're bringing out the next volume in March, in hardback... only a two-month wait!) If he can keep up the same mix of high-octane action, suspenseful intrigue, strong characterisation and effective character development, then I'll definitely remain a fan to the very end. At which point I'll hopefully find time to sit down and re-read all twenty through again. At least a couple of times...

Great stuff! Go forth! Acquire! Read!

Schedule Watch: Orbit, through to November 2008

The latest copy of the Orbit Books publication schedule came through from Sam Smith earlier in the week, with new titles through to November 2008. Seems like a good opportunity to pick up where I left off last time...

Glancing down the new listing, I see that Orbit are putting out a couple of new series. Well, new to the UK, anyway. The first is the Castings Trilogy by Australian author Pamela Freeman. Orbit have had great success in recent years by importing ready-published series from Down Under and releasing them in quick succession in the UK, which is a great business model for building a fan-base as it keeps the enthusiasm-levels fresh. Look for the first two of those, Blood Ties [Amazon] and Deep Water [Amazon] in June and October '08, with the third part to follow around about September '09 (according to the schedule on Pamela's website).

The second is a feisty-heroine supernatural romance type series that's already established in the US: the 'Mercedes Thompson' ("VW Mechanic and Shapechanger") books by Patricia Briggs. Moon Called [Amazon] will be first up, in June, followed by Blood Bound [Amazon] in July and Iron Kissed [Amazon] in August. Much more Jo's sort of thing that mine, I have to admit, but she does tend to throw anything really good at my head and demand that I read it, so you never know.

A few more feisty-heroine supernatural romance type titles in the offing as well, with new books from Jennifer Rardin, Lilith Saintcrow and Kelley Armstrong, so between these and the entire Gollancz Romancz list, Jo should be anticipating a full reading schedule herself next year.

But these are the titles that I'm personally looking forward to trying to shoe-horn into my reading schedule:

• Charlie Huston's new 'Joe Pitt' novel, Half the Blood of Brooklyn [Amazon] will be published in February. Good old supernatural investigation, without the excessive snogging and all the rest of that girly stuff. Much more my shot of bourbon... ;)
• The Execution Channel [Amazon] by Ken MacLeod appears in paperback in February as well. I've had the hardback on my 'godsdammit, you have got to make time for these...' shelf since publication. The paperback has to be read...
• A new Dresden Files title, Small Favour [Amazon] is out in April, the first time Orbit will have published Jim Butcher in hardback. So that's a double-dose of Harry Dresden early next year, then, what with the paperback of White Night [Amazon] appearing in January...
• Black Ships [Amazon] by debutant Jo Graham sounds like an intriguing historical fantasy: a girl with the power of oracle journeys the ancient Middle East in the company of an exiled Trojan prince... could be interesting.

That's pretty much the cream of the crop, personally speaking. And a good crop it looks like being, too, especially with the rest of the titles on the schedule - lots of new series fantasy and a few re-issues sprinkled in for good measure - weighing in as well.

Incidentally, any other publishers who happen to glance this way, by all means feel free to send me your schedules and I'll do my best to give 'em a similar once-over...

Schedule Watch: Orbit and Tor UK

I've just received the latest update to the publication schedule for Orbit Books, and I've been hanging on to a schedule that Tor UK sent through a few weeks back.

Personal highlights for me look like they'll be:

Orbit

• Mike Carey's third Felix Castor novel, Dead Men's Boots [Amazon] is almost upon us: publication date September 6th. (Amazon seem to have the wrong artwork there...)
• I've been promising myself that I'll put aside some time to dive into something by Charles Stross and I might just start with The Jennifer Morgue [Amazon], which is also out early next month, in paperback, and follow that up with Halting State [Amazon], which is due in January.
• The third part of K.J. Parker's Engineer Trilogy - The Escapement [Amazon] - will be published in December. Hopefully it'll improve on the rather slow pacing of the second volume (memo to self: pull finger out and post about that one, you finished it weeks ago...)
• I've already read Debatable Space [Amazon], the debut novel by Philip Palmer, which is due to be published in January. Space opera with an acid twist, well worth trying out.
• Jim Butcher's next Dresden Files novel, White Night [Amazon] is another January title. One for the must-read shelf.
• And who isn't looking forward to Matter [Amazon], the new Iain M Banks Culture novel? Due February.

That'll do for Orbit for now. I'll pick a few more from 2008 next time.

Tor UK

• The Waking [Amazon] by T.M. Jenkins looks like an intriguing sf / thriller amalgam. One for the old pool-side, read-til-I-drop holiday later in the year, maybe...
• That man Stross again... Tor are publishing the UK edition of the first part of his Merchant Princes series, The Family Trade [Amazon] will be out in November.

Time to start planning a bit of a to-be-read list re-organisation... :)

More Dresden Files on the way

I learned by way of a recent Publisher's Lunch e-bulletin that Roc Books in the US has bought books #12 and #13 in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series.

I dropped Darren Nash of Orbit Books (Butcher's UK publisher) a line, and he confirmed that Orbit have already signed up books #9 through #11 and that #12 and #13 probably wouldn't be too far behind...

Speaking as a big Dresden fan - books and TV series both - I think that's great news. And I also think that there ought to be enough in the way of open story arcs and plot development in the first eight books to sustain the development of the series into the next five and hopefully beyond. As long as neither Butcher nor his editor start thinking that anything goes because he's got a TV deal - as long as the writing stays sharp and the action scenes stay fast and furious - then the risk of the law of diminishing returns setting in and ruining things should be minimal.

Which is more than can be said of some long-running series. I thoroughly enjoyed the first six or seven books in Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series. I thought they were well-written, sexy, action-packed, intelligent and above-all interesting takes on the modern-day vampire hunter mythos (and the earliest installment was published in 1994, - two years after the Buffy movie, but three years before the TV show hit TV screens, in case you were rolling your eyes already).

But then Hamilton's books started degenerating into little more than supernatural soft porn, with what seemed like minimal plot and not much in the way of character development to speak of either, and I just gave up reading them.

Hell, I'm no prude, but I generally want to get more from the fiction I read than just titillation and the occasional wise-crack. So when it got to the point where the sex-scenes were dominating the books rather than adding colour to them - becoming the point of the books, or so it seemed - then that was it for me. 'Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter' I was interested in. 'Anita Blake, Vampire Shagger'... not so much.

Incidentally, I read the first two of Hamilton's Merry Gentry books and they're even worse (or even better, depending on your point of view and preferences, of course...) so I've given the latest four of those a miss as well...

I admit, they might have improved drastically in the past couple of volumes... but then I wouldn't know. If you've read them and they have got a whole lot better recently, let me know, would you?

Edit 10.05.07 Dave Hebblethwaite sends me a link to John Grant's review of the second Merry Gentry book on Infinity Plus. Nice to know I'm not alone...

Recommended Reading: 'Proven Guilty' by Jim Butcher

I finished the latest episode in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series the other night, and it was fantastic.

I have to admit I was worried when I picked up the book and saw that the page count seemed to have doubled and the print seemed to have noticeably shrunk since the previous volume.

Had Butcher - or, perhaps more pertinently, Butcher's editors - succumbed to celebrity author syndrome, in which a writer's rise to best-seller prominence renders their prose apparently sacrosanct - untouchable by the red pen of editorial common sense - whether it really needs to be or not..?

My fears proved unfounded. Yes, Proven Guilty is a much longer Harry Dresden tale than any of its predecessors, but the good news is that it doesn't feel like it is. It's still the same dose of slick, polished, adrenaline-fuelled prose, with all the hallmarks of a damn good Harry Dresden novel: action, intrigue, heroism, wisecracks, and mystically magical shenanigans galore.

The reason for all those extra pages is that by now - eight volumes in and still going strong - there's an awful lot of back-story for Jim Butcher to remind his readers of. And very sensibly he takes a bit of time to fill in the majority of the potential blanks; taking account of the possibility that this is either the reader's first exposure to the Dresdenverse, or that they may well have read a lot of other fiction in-between instalments, and that their creaking, story-stuffed memories might not be capable of keeping absolutely everything in perfect order. Jim, thank you. My brain appreciates it.

Anyway, I'm not going to say anything about the plot, save that it contains some extremely interesting character developments and sets up all sorts of potentially intriguing story-arcs for future volumes. This really is a series that could run and run.

If, like me, you're a huge fan of The Dresden Files already, then... well, you'll probably have read this one as soon as it hit the bookstores. But if it's still lurking on a 'to-be read' shelf because perhaps you, too were a bit worried by the potential implications of both page-count growth and font-size shrinkage, then don't be shy. Grab it down, dust it off, put the kettle down and settle in for a session. I reckon you'll fly through it, and you'll be glad you did.

And if you're not a Dresden Files fan quite yet, well, you could start here, but you'd be better off following my earlier advice, and starting with the first book in the series. Like I say, there's a lot of back-story to catch up on by now, and a lot of it is really, really good...

Highly Recommended viewing: The Dresden Files

You know, I really wasn't convinced to begin with, but now I'm absolutely loving the SciFi Channel's adaptation of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files.

It all started off rather horribly. The season pilot was - in this particular Dresden-fan's ever-so humble opinon - absolute dross.

Mind you, with the benefit of hindsight, I think I can see why. Imagine the scene at the production meeting, as the guys behind the show try to work out how to sell the series to the network...

"So, what are the major themes of this one again?"

"Let's see: black magic, horrific murder, ritual sacrifice, the occult, the undead rising..."

"A-ha. And the lead character?"

"Well, he's this guy who's an incredibly powerful wizard. He's a good guy at heart, but he's got a dark side, and he hides from his true nature on the grounds that if he unleashed the full force of his magical powers he could probably, like, destroy the world or something. So he's basically conflicted. Screwed up. Human."

"Aaa-ha. So, no clear-cut white hat, then?"

"Well, no. More kinda grey... and patchy... with scorch-marks..."

So, the guys behind the show make a special effort for the pilot. Harry becomes a good wizard, through-and-through. He works with the cops, he solves a mystery, he saves his cop-buddy from possession by a demonic body-snatcher (read: foreign hijacker) and an All-American kid from a really nasty kid-eating monster (read: paedophile) and comes out of it covered in glory, and in just enough of his own blood for a purple heart. Hoorah! Apple-pie for all! The network buys the series...

...at which point, thankfully, the script writers throw away all that crap and get on with telling the real story of Harry Dresden.

We're up to episode five (or six, I'd have to check the Sky+ box) in the UK and so far the rest of the series has been bloody fantastic. Elements of the back-story and plot from the books is gradually being introduced, with just enough of a twist here and there to keep things fresh and interesting. Bob is working really well as an all-English eccentric ex-sorceror. Which is good. I mean, Bob - this Bob, I wonder? - is meant to be several centuries old, so I'm glad they haven't given him a Brooklyn accent or something. And, most importantly, Harry and Lt. Murphy's relationship has been restored to its proper love-hate status, which has worked so well throughout the seven-book series to-date.

Having said all that, I can understand why someone coming fresh to the series without any prior knowledge of the books might find it a little inaccessible in places. The producers have made quite a few fan-nods in terms of back-story, so there are a few things that you know from reading the books that you might not immediately realise from watching the show. For instance, fan-viewers know that Morgan has the power and the authority to kill Harry if he so much as puts a black-magic flavoured footstep out of line... which adds a nice tension to their scenes, but might not come across so well if you're a newbie.

So, my advice if you're struggling: read the series, record the show. Then come back and see if your appreciation of its finer points isn't raised through the roof...

Dresden Files trailer #2 on YouTube

The second trailer for the Sci-Fi Channel's forthcoming series adaptation of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files is now available to watch at YouTube:

Hmm. I'm still not 100% convinced. I think I'd have to see more of the look & feel of the bad guys and a lot more principle character interaction before I'm completely sold.

Thanks to George Walkley of Jim Butcher's UK publisher, Orbit Books, for the heads-up.

Recommended reading: The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher

When we first meet him, our hero Harry Dresden is a down-at-heel, gumshoe wizard-for-hire, living in a basement apartment in one of the less reputable areas of Chicago, taking whatever cases - mostly missing persons, or missing felines - come his way, and helping out Karrin Murphy of the Chicago PD with any cases that go so far beyond the norm that even the cops get desperate enough to call him in.

As well as trying to make ends meet, he spends a lot of his time trying to keep out of the bad books of the White Council - they're the secret society of wizards in charge of regulating the use of magic and generally keeping the bad guys under control - just in case he puts so much as a toe out of line and their enforcer, Morgan, finally gets to have his way and carry out the suspended death sentence that's been hanging over Harry since his former mentor tried to eat Harry's mind, and Harry had to get rough and kill him. See? back-story a-plenty, and we're only a couple of chapters in...

Anyhow, I have to say that so far I'm thoroughly enjoying this series. The characterisation is fantastic, the supporting cast is varied and colourful, and Jim Butcher's milieu is extremely well thought-out; it's both solidly consistent and highly intriguing. A multitude of supernatural beasties come pouring out of the woodwork at every turn, and Harry - although he's potentially one of the most powerful wizards to have lived, if certain tantalising hints are to be believed - is young and still relatively inexperienced, so he's not immune to getting his arse kicked in the line of duty.

In fact, that's one trick that Butcher manages to pull off quite neatly; he's very good at instilling a palpable sense of risk in Harry's encounters with his various and numerous foes. Admittedly, as the hero of an ongoing series, there's a good chance that Dresden's not going to get wind up slaughtered halfway through the book, but there's still every chance that something bad will happen to those that Harry works with, cares about and loves...

I'm very glad I started reading this particular series before the Sci-Fi Channel announced they were making a TV series based on them. I much prefer to experience books first, adaptation afterwards, rather than the other way around, and I'm not sure - judging by the trailer - that the producers have got the casting exactly right; Paul Blackthorne looks the part as Dresden, but I'm not sure that Valerie Cruz will make a convincing Karrin Murphy... we'll see when the series finally makes it to the UK.

If you're a fan of supernatural detective / mystery series in general, then this is one of the better ones I've come across. Here are the Amazon links for the first seven volumes, UK editions:

1. Storm Front
2. Fool Moon
3. Grave Peril
4. Summer Knight
5. Death Masks
6. Blood Rites
7. Dead Beat

Let me know what you think when you've read the first book or two, yeah?

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