The Amber Spyglass
For this project, I decided to use the book “The Amber Spyglass” by Phillip Pullman. This book is the third installment in the Series “His Dark Materials” which contain the books “The Golden Compass” and “The Subtle Knife” respectfully. The book at a glance is the story of two children traveling through multiple worlds. It is a story about good, evil and the ways these two children experience both as they grow older worlds thrown into chaos by war. Through out the book, the children use a knife to venture into these different worlds as they both flee from and fight the forces trying to use and corrupt them. These forces, wether it be the church who is trying to kill them, or the parents who are trying to use them force the children and their daemons (their souls manifested in a physical, animal form) to flee, and in the end find out who they really are. After traveling through the world of the dead, fighting battles with angels and finally finding happiness and love, the children find out a terrible secret about what happens when they travel between these worlds. They both must return to their separate worlds and must close, and never re-open pathways to other worlds. This is to escape both an early death from living in a world you were not born in, and to stop the elementary particles know as dust from escaping into the oblivion. It is a sad, and heart wrenching story that became my favorite book when I was younger, and was an obvious choice for me.
The illustration for this cover takes place in the world of the Mulefa’s, a elephant like race which rides on wheels. The landscape, is a kind of grassy, tropical kind of flat land that features “Seedpod” trees that Mulefa’s use to make their wheels with. With these wheels, the Mulefas has beaten roads into the landscape for more rapid transportation. In the distance you can see a flock of white birds that in the story come to destroy the Villages these gentle creatures have created. In the foreground of the piece is Will, a main character in the book, as he is cutting through to this world. Although he does not realize it the gap which he has opened is letting dust, the elementary particle that allows things to mature, and daemons to settle in their final form, seeps from the world he has opened into the abyss, never to be seen again.
The illustration for this cover takes place in the world of the Mulefa’s, a elephant like race which rides on wheels. The landscape, is a kind of grassy, tropical kind of flat land that features “Seedpod” trees that Mulefa’s use to make their wheels with. With these wheels, the Mulefas has beaten roads into the landscape for more rapid transportation. In the distance you can see a flock of white birds that in the story come to destroy the Villages these gentle creatures have created. In the foreground of the piece is Will, a main character in the book, as he is cutting through to this world. Although he does not realize it the gap which he has opened is letting dust, the elementary particle that allows things to mature, and daemons to settle in their final form, seeps from the world he has opened into the abyss, never to be seen again.
Process
The process of this project happened in about a month. There were 3 or 4 different stages that I went through, including 3 different concept drawings, semi-final, final drawings and the digital coloring. The line art in the project was done with ink and was then scanned into photoshop and colored with my tablet.
One of the 3 beginning concept drawings.
One of the 3 beginning concept drawings.
One of the 3 beginning concept drawings.
The final pencil and Ink drawings before scanning into photoshop.
