Thea Magerand is an illustrator and master monster maker. Her lifelong love of art, sci-fi, fantasy, and horror fuels her imaginative creations. With a background in geology and paleontology, she brings a deep understanding of anatomy and movement to her work, allowing her to design fantastical creatures and characters with a realistic twist. From ancient Norse gods and strange faeries to sentient cyborgs, Thea’s passion lies in bringing unique worlds and characters to life through character and concept art, book covers, and imaginative illustrations. Her artistic journey has taken her from years of drawing with pen and charcoal as a youngster, towards the more digital world of graphics, tablets and computer programs. Her work is inspired by her love of literature, video games, and immersive fantastical universes. Now a fully independent artist, Thea lives in a quiet high-mountain area, balancing her art with time spent with her husband, pets, outdoor adventures, reading, gaming, knitting and riding her motorcycle. For more information on Thea Magerand (aka Ikaruna) please visit her website.
Q: What is your process for creating a cover?
No AI was used of course, it’s just good old Shutterstock resources plus editing, plus hand painting plus mix & matching of bits of photos or illustrations:) But I’ve no idea how to convey that to people, hahah! Since it’s not one of the covers where I have a character that I sketch, and things are well set in place from the start, but I’d also love people to understand the process a bit and realize it’s not AI, lol.
For example, early explorations contained a skull, which I found too much after. The title and author line were the first things in place since they were supposed to be in the same place as for the other anthology, so I needed to plan around them in fact.
Above: An initial design concept for Into the Dark
Q: What was your first reaction when you heard about this project?
I was thrilled, since one of my premades was actually the cover for the first anthology (Through Other Eyes), I was delighted to have a chance at doing a custom project for this one!
Q: The cover is stunning — where did you draw inspiration from?
From the stories themselves in fact – after going through all of them, I felt like the cover should be not something specific, a scene, or a character, but rather something to sum up the feelings that the stories generated. Something dark, but beautiful, something terrible, but delicate as well.
In my work I also use a lot of stock imagery from sites like Shutterstock, and the illustrations of Tithi Luadthong are often an inspiration (some of the black tendrils on the cover are parts of one of his licensed illustrations from there for example), my other biggest inspiration being the work of H.R. Giger.
Q: Can you share a detail from the artwork that backers might not notice at first glance?
I’m not sure it’s a detail, more of an interpretation perhaps – but after playing around with shapes and textures, I almost accidentally turned the central sharp teethy creature, into a flower. A many mouthed, open flower. It had a skull before, and then I realized…it’s actually way creepier like that. What can be more unsettling than mixing something as beautiful and delicate as a flower’s petals, with sharp carnivorous teeth?
Q: How do you usually approach illustrating dark or fantastical themes? Did this project challenge you in any new ways?
It really depends on the project. I love to mix very opposite concepts in creating dark illustrations, so that I can enhance the unsettling feeling where I can.
If a project requires a character or a creature, I usually start off sketching by hand and then detail further on. When I have to convey an atmosphere or something more abstract, my approach is more that of a digital matte painter. I mix anything from licensed stock vectors, photos, bits of images or textures from royalty free sites, hand painting over them where needed, altering it till it becomes what I need it to become.
This project’s challenge was actually the fact that it’s not one story, or one book – it’s an anthology. So, you have to come up with something that would give an overall impression for all of the stories, not just one. And that’s a very subjective experience! What I find creepy or beautiful might not be the same thing for other readers – hence the challenge
Above: Another early version of the Into the Dark cover.
Q: What was your favorite part of working on the Into the Dark cover?
Honestly, reading through the stories. And then the feeling that I can actually take any bits from them and turn them into something! The hard part was that I had jotted down notes for potential scenes from almost every story, and how on earth was I going to choose?! Which is why in the end I went for symbolism rather than actual scenes.
Q: If you had to sum up the anthology’s atmosphere in one word as an artist, what would it be?
Fulfilling! From a reader’s point of view, and especially a lover of dark fantasy and horror, I found the experience complete – not only dark, but also beautiful, deeply human, and at times monstrous, fantastical, and yet grounded in emotional reality. Balanced. The way it shows human nature with all its flaws, honest, but without taking anything off its beauty, or glory. Sometimes heroes choose the dark side. Sometimes there is no happy ending, sometimes morality is all about perspective. I do love how the book left me with the equivalent of a mental shiver.