Back in the November 7 post, I told you about my decision to go with Bob Larkin–painted covers for Pan’s novel series as opposed to the fairly interchangeable photo covers that just about every other publishing company uses for their Young Adult titles. One of the reasons was that I couldn’t imagine what it would take to have a replica of Pan’s leather jacket created, complete with the bat ornament that hangs off its left shoulder.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, courtesy of master artist and sculptor Bob Larkin, I proudly present the one-of-a-kind, real-life Pandora Zwieback leather jacket—complete with bat shoulder ornament and pentagram choker!
Sweet, aren’t they? It’s the same make of women’s motorcycle jacket that Bob used for the Blood Feud painting. The neckwear is a combination of a three-tier choker I found through Amazon.com, and a large piece of Halloween costume jewelry. The bat ornament is constructed of Sculpey modeling clay over a metal frame, then baked in the oven—which means that once it hardened, the thing became extremely fragile; drop it on the floor and it’s bye-bye, ornament.
The devil art is the 16th-century title page image from Eloy d’Amerval’s epic poem Livre de la Deablerie (reproduced in the Picture Book of Devils, Demons and Witchcraft, from Dover Publishing, which is where I found it). I scanned it and Bob printed it on cotton, then attached it to the jacket with industrial-grade glue—that thing is never coming off!—and painted over the image. Then, after he stripped the oil from the jacket cuffs, the sleeves each took about 30 coats of white paint as a primer so the black leather wouldn’t show through. And after many more hours of painting and waiting for each coat to dry, the sleeves were done—and Pan’s jacket was finally complete!
What about the bat-faced belt buckle she also wears? (And if you’ve read Blood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 1, you know where she’ll be getting that from, at some point…) I’m so glad you asked—because Bob sculpted that, too!
That’s just damn creepy-looking, isn’t it? Not to mention those wings would probably stab Pan in the stomach every time she bent over—but hey, she’s a fictional character with the reader-influencing power of suspended disbelief, so she can wear whatever she wants! 😀
And before you ask, I’m still using painted covers on the series!
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And with that we come to the end of 2011. (Yeah, I know there’s one more week left, but the office’ll be closed between Christmas and New Year’s—at least that’s the plan.) It’s been a mildly bumpy road, this first year back in the publishing saddle for StarWarp Concepts after a six-year hiatus, but the madness has been fun in its own way. And rest assured, we’re just getting started!
However, we couldn’t have made it this far without the support of you folks out there, so on behalf of book designers Mat Postawa and Mike Rivilis, Web designer Dave De Mond, artists Bob Larkin and Eliseu “Zeu” Gouveia, and photographer Marc Witz, I wish you and yours a fun and safe holiday season and a Happy New Year.
See you in 2012!