Prospective Artists

I am looking for someone to create all of my cover art for a series of books. I have 4 novels planned in this new series I’m calling Nikkei. Since no content books like journals and planners have been popular on Amazon, I’m releasing character journals in between the main novel releases. I’m actually writing content for my no content books. They will have a chapter of new material in each of them that will focus on various characters along with the blank lines for a journal or day planner. I will need cover art for 9 to 12 character journals. I am hoping that I will get some sales from the, “also from this author” lists on Amazon. I will also need some artwork for a website and social media pages. I would like to have one artist to bring this all to life. I am hoping to release all of this over the next 2 to 3 years.

The first novel is written and ready to be uploaded. It’s titled, Nikkei The first Guardian. I need some art that will grab people’s attention since this is my first book. I want to show a scene from the Guardians’ first battle where they basically get annihilated. During the ground campaign on a planet named Tengal, Nikkei the heroine of this series is attacked by the big bad. His name is Enbrious and he is a Ravian Warlord. They kill him in the second book, and then again in the third… In the scene that I’ve included in this packet, Nikkei is attacked by him while he is cloaked. He swipes at her with one of his large arms and rips her left arm off. His eight claws tares into the left side of her face, neck, and chest removing her arm. She’s thrown into a house that collapses on her and she loses consciousness.

She regains consciousness later that night and finds that she is leaned up against a pile of dead Guardians. Then she sees the 10 foot tall Ravian Warlord standing over her, he’s eating one of those dead Guardians, her men, armor and all. He then talks to her through their dead bodies lying around her and tells her about himself and that they’re back and going to kill everyone… Then he decides to send a message back to the Ancients, the Guardians creators. He remembered one of the Ancients used a blue cross as a symbol. She was the bioengineer that lead the team that turned Nikkei into a cyborg, hence the books title of The First Guardian. Amiel gave Nikkei a blue crystal necklace in the shape of a cross to wear to protect her. Nikkei also painted this blue cross on the chest plate of her armor. So, he sees this and decides to send her back with the few remaining men and one ship she has left. He drags her off the bodies and onto the street where he holds her down with one of his large upper arms. The Rav evolved from some sort of spider / scorpion creature. They are bipedal, and have four arms. They have a normal sized lower set of arms coming out of their lower rib cage and they have their massive upper arms that are actually two arms that’s grown together. So those hands on their upper arms have 8 long fingers and two thumbs, one on each side of the large hand. His hand is so large that it covers most of her chest. I’m thinking four of his fingers are on each side of her neck wrapped up around her shoulders and the two large thumbs are on either side of her rib cage.

I’m not sure how scary you can make a hand look, but I’d like for Predator kids to scream and run when they see this hand. So Enbrious drags Nikkei down onto the street and there’s lots of blood trailed behind her. He holds her down and cauterizes her wounds with his gauntlet knives that glow orange when they’re on and extended. Think Predator, but straight knives. So that’s the picture I want on the front of the book. It captures a very bleak moment from early on in the Great War. The description that I wrote and included with this packet tells about how it’s Nikkei’s responsibility to rebuild the Guardians into something that can stand against the Rav. If you titled the artwork, I want it to be something like, “The end of all hope.” I kind of want people to see the pic while they’re scrolling through the endless pages of book covers on Amazon or Kindle and stop because that girl is going to die. Just a big scary double hand holding down this cute black-haired girl in the middle of a street. If you want to place his right hand with the gauntlet knives that’s great, but not required. All the Guardians look 16 years old and will never age by the way. When the Guardians are first starting out, they’re much like terminators except their chassis would be covered in a white ceramic covering. They evolve rapidly to try and stand against the Rav. This whole series is mostly about their fight not only against the Rav, but their struggle to save people and develop the technology to survive.

At this point in the series the Guardians don’t have iron man like armor, they do wear space suits with helmets. Not NASA glass globe helmets, something more tactical, but Nikkei woke up without her helmet in this scene. Her suit should look more tactical swat gear with some metal mixed in. The Guardians were in a rush to field as many soldiers as possible, so the suits were basically body armor / space ready suit. Not powered armor, yet.

The Rav have been around for an eternity. Enbrious’ armor has to look very, very old. The Rav have a black obsidian looking exoskeleton that they bolt their armor to. They live in their armor, it becomes part of them. His hand needs to look crazy scary. Maybe try 4 joints per finger instead of the human three joints per digit. They have claws and teeth that are old and rotten. Faded grey/white with black and yellow rotted spots. Their armor forms metal claws and teeth that protect their real ones. They also have a large whipping tail. The armor on their tails actually look like metal vertebrae that’s bolted on. The vertebrae armor is sharpened on the edges. Their heads are large with bones protruding and forming a crest. Never described that too well, so that’s left to your imagination. They have 10 black reflective demon like eyes, but other than that, I never described exactly how they look.

Enclosed is all the information to hopefully bring this horrid scene alive. I need something that’s harsh, gritty, or graphic. I included the description of the book to give you an understanding of what this series is all about. I’m hoping that if the cover art grabs people’s attention, they might read the description I wrote. Then maybe a couple of them will buy the book. I also included several pages of the story surrounding the scene. Don’t laugh at my drawing, I’m NOT an artist… If you need anything else please call or email me. Of course, before you start we should talk price? I’d be happy with a pencil sketch to show me how you envision this scene before you commit a lot of time to the cover art. I don’t want to be overly picky like most writers are about their first book, but I’d like for the art to stay true to the story.

Thank you for you time,

Steve Moats

Nikkeiseries@yahoo.com