As an artist yourself, what are your thoughts on the artwork in the Wheel of Time world book?
I was a little disappointed with the final version of many of the character pieces, but I guess it should be no surprise that the characters as they appeared in my head look different from Todd’s vision of them. I think most people have their own vision of how the characters look. I know that R.J. had approval over the initial sketches, but I was disappointed that the finished pieces were not tighter. I can say I would have done them differently—but not necessarily any better. Todd has received a lot of criticism for his pieces in the book. I know Todd was under a lot of stress and pressure, and I suspect it affected the final product more than he would have liked.
The inserts with the Darrel Sweet covers however, are wonderfully reproduced—even though R.J. says Mr. Sweet’s covers are not necessarily accurate. Darrell Sweet did the cover of the anthology for my first story, so I have a particular fondness for his work. Elisa Mitchell did a great job with the cover art—though I will never understand why they shrank her piece down and surrounded it with gobs of white space. I guess it was some kind of marketing choice. I was also happy with most of the spot illustrations, ornaments, and maps that she and John Ford and Thomas Canty contributed.
RJ explained in another interview that Todd Hamilton kind of got screwed in his contract, which affected the quality of his art.
If you are viewing this on github.io, you can see that this site is open source. Please do not try to improve this page. It is auto-generated by a python script. If you have suggestions for improvements, please start a discussion on the github repo or the Discord.