Is there an expected date yet for the artwork?
The final artwork has been delivered by Michael Whelan. And it was gonna be shown to you ravening characters, except that Mr. Sweet has very kindly brought his father’s magnificent art, and we decided not to, because we want you to eyeball and enjoy all the beautiful Darrell Sweet which is hanging in the art show, and it’s just bursting with life if you haven’t seen it yet. It’s wonderful. But it should be possible to look at the Whelan…I dunno…Paul, when are you going online? Do you know?
I don’t know…we were discussing that. [something about a couple of weeks]
Paul’s cover copy [?] [something about “I answered you this week…”] “Paul, give me a break! This is Jordan Con. Next week?” But it’s a beautiful cover. I guess that’s an oxymoron…I mean a redundancy; it’s Michael Whelan. It really is beautiful, but he is also—I don’t know if we spoke about this—but I think he has taken pains to make it a compliment to all of Darrell’s work on the series, so it’s at one and the same time unmistakably Whelan, but it is also complimentary when it’s put up with all the covers racked out. You’ll see what I mean when you get a look at it.
Excellent. We only have three more minutes, so I have a question here, and then I’ll go to Matt.
My question was about Michael’s cover. Did y’all have any particular scene that you wanted him to illustrate, or did y’all give him a couple of scenes, and he goes, “Oh…” and [?]
No, in this case, Brandon worked with him at first, and I wasn’t really privy with that. It was great; it started out that Michael Whelan was going to do a cover for the ebook of A Memory of Light , and Brandon and Michael were playing together happily. (to Peter) Any comment on that? It was the same scene always, wasn’t it?
Actually, Michael was curious about one of the scenes that might get deleted, but Brandon said that wouldn’t be good for the cover anyway, so…(mic feedback) (laughter) (switches mic) Um…hello? (laughter) It mostly goes through Irene also, so Michael did one main sketch that had the full wrap-around cover, and then he did four alternate front covers, and then Brandon gave his feedback to Irene, and Tom Doherty gave his feedback, and…
So did we.
Yeah, and Harriet gave her feedback, and then…so they picked which one they liked the best, and the finished version, I also agree, looks fantastic.
And then of course, when we found that Darrell will very sadly not be here, the decision was whether to use it on the hardcover as well…and it’s grand. It really is.
And there was a section where Michael Whelan sent a bunch of questions to make sure he had everything right, and Brandon had to answer some, and I had to answer some, and so…
And Sam? Is Sam Weber here? Well, Sam told me yesterday that Michael had called him and said, “What’s a ter’angreal ? (laughter) So thanks to Sam Weber too.
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