To tie in with the Sci-Fi-O-Rama design upgrade here’s the first of hopefully many special features this year! “Roger Dean, as chosen by those he has inspired”… So a quick bit of history on Roger Dean, just in case you aren’t familiar with him and his work:
Roger Dean (born 31 August 1944), is an English artist, designer, architect and publisher, best known for his work on album covers for musicians (particularly Progressive Rock acts). His unique, instantly recognisable style
often features exotic, fantastic landscapes typically populated with dramatic, impossible natural rock formations, lush alien wildlife/fauna, and strange organic structures…
With the release of James Cameron’s technically groundbreaking blockbuster “Avatar” Roger’s currently enjoying a surge of interest in his work, as it’s obivious Avatars design team have borrowed many viusal cues… to be fair though, It’s pretty much inconceivable to think of fantasy and sci-fi art without thinking of Roger Dean.
So to celebrate his work once more I’ve asked a selection of contemporary designers & artists to select their favourite Roger Dean piece and add a few notes as too why…
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Billy Cox “Nitro Function” (LP Sleeve 1972)
Chosen by: Eric Carl
“One of my favorite Roger Dean pieces would have to be the 1972 album art for “Nitro Function” by Billy Cox. It wasn’t a piece I was familiar with until browsing through his first art book, “Views”. While most of Roger Dean’s work focuses on landscapes, it’s his more character-driven pieces like these that I’m most drawn to. There’s a few different aspects of the image that I find interesting:
First would have to be the unusually sparse composition, as the primary characters actually make up rather little of the image. Most of the real estate is occupied by negative space.
Second would be the depiction of the characters themselves—while the horses and hybrid spaceship/alien creatures (what are they exactly?) all appear to be living, breathing entities, they take on more of an architectural and structural sensibility within the landscape (particularly the most prominent horse and rider located in the foreground). Roger Dean has admitted himself that he’s not so great with figure drawing—maybe his rigid characters here are just a result of that, but I think the ambiguity between inanimate object and lifeform makes for an intriguing image.
The last thing I love about this piece is exactly how he’s chosen to occupy all of his negative space—with one epic, swirling cloud of who-knows-what. Is it an atomic explosion pouring a poisonous toxin across the wasteland? Or just the common night sky on an alien world? Regardless of its literal intent, the technique used here (known as “marbling”, a combination of oil-based paints and water) does a great job of setting an ominous, other-worldly tone to the scene.”
Eric’s portfolio site is here: http://sans-concept.com
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Red Dragon (Acrylic on Canvas, 1987)
Chosen by: Dan McPharlin
“My first encounter with Roger Dean’s paintings was in the late 1980s with the lavish packaging he produced for Liverpool software house Psygnosis. This work, Red Dragon, was used on the packaging for Barbarian in 1987.
I think what I love about this in particular is the graphic punch of the vividly coloured subject (apparently a later addition) against what is essentially a monochromatic backdrop; a strange, almost oriental landscape full of distressed bone-like forms in geological upheaval, now draped with silvery waterfalls, clumps of vegetation and thick fog. We are left to ponder the red dragon’s place in this world; no doubt near the top of the food chain, prowling a rocky outcrop in search of his next meal.”
Dan’s Portfolio Site: http://www.danmcpharlin.com/
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Virgin Records Logo
Chosen by: Dick Hogg
“I am going to choose the original Virgin Record label. It is as old as I am. It combines two of my favorite things fantasy art and graphic design. Two things that don’t normally mix very well but but in this case I think it is perfect. It is also the piece of his work that I see the most. I don’t own any Yes albums and all my old Amiga games are in the loft but I do have a 7″ of In Dulci Jubilo that I play occasionally and the label always makes me smile.”
Dick’s portfolio site: http://www.h099.com/
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Floating Islands
Chosen by: James White
“Selecting a favorite Roger Dean painting was a bit cumbersome because his portfolio is as vast as the landscapes he depicts. But to me, Roger Dean’s “Floating Islands” best represents his body of work. Those islands look perfectly at home suspended in mid-air, and I love the palette and composition of this painting. It’s very calm, serene and natural, almost like he sat on one of those islands to paint his surroundings.
This might have been one of the first pieces I saw by Dean, so to me it remains very symbolic of what he does.”
James White’s ever popular blog: http://blog.signalnoise.com/
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Paladin “Charge” (LP Sleeve 1972)
Chosen by Jeff Love
“Roger Dean can lay claim to defining two areas of artistic expression; the vinyl record sleeve and Science Fiction art. This image – like much of Dean’s work – falls into both categories, and was possibly commissioned as an LP sleeve for progressive rock band Paladin’s 1972 album “Charge”. I was lucky enough to find a huge poster of this painting in a dirty record shop in an alley in Glasgow’s West End, I now have it framed and hanging on my wall.
There appears to be no great meaning to be found in the painting, however like most SF art it works best when used in conjunction with the imagination of the viewer. Personally, I’m always drawn the the mechanical horse’s head, where the Paladin appears to be manipulating and controlling the beast via some method of hand-held control.”
Jeff runs the excellent http://ski-ffy.blogspot.com/
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Terrorpods (Box Art 1987)
Chosen by: Lopetz (Büro Destruct)
“For me the name “Roger Dean” is instantly connected to “Commodore Amiga” plus the purple owl game-publisher “Psygnosis”. I’m beamed right back to 1987 into my room when I was a teenager playing those fantastic games like “Barbarian”, “Shadow of the Beast”, “Obliterator” and last but not least “Terrorpods”. I selected “Terrorpods” as my favorite Roger Dean artwork for the frightening sci-fi atmosphere in the illustrations on the cover and the poster which accompanied the two floppy disks. I was so curious to meet those Tripod creatures in motion. As the game graphics were poor compared with today, the storyline/gameplay was clever and Psygnosis understood to attract players by impressive packaging artworks from illustrators like Roger Dean. Just guessing James Cameron played that game too 
Just have to search for those dusty floppy disks in my parents house roof room now.”
Büro Destruct: http://www.burodestruct.net
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Psygnosis Logo
Chosen by: Kieran Kelly (Sci-Fi-O-Rama Admin!)
“I’m notoriously useless at making executive decisions, particularly when they involve favouriting, so then I’ve decided to go with the piece that best encapsulates all my first Roger Dean A/W memories; I’ve chosen the memorable Psygnosis “Silver Owl” Logo that anyone who owned an Amiga or ST will be familiar with.
Psygnosis for those that don’t know is a Liverpool based game developer originally founded in 1984 and now known as “SCE Studio Liverpool”. Back to the late 80’s Psygnosis produced a rash of games primarily for the 16-bit Commodore Amiga and Atari St platforms, as Lopetz alluded to in his notes graphics back then were far simpler than today so exciting, enticing box art was critical….. and no one did it better that Pysgnosis!”
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Notes
Read more about Roger Dean here at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Dean and visit his home site here: http://www.rogerdean.com
io9.com have a large selection of Roger’s landscapes and plenty of discussion at their post “Did Prog Rock’s Greatest Artist Inspire Avatar? All Signs Point To Yes”
Links to more info on the mentioned Pygnosis Games “Barbarian” and Terrorpods are here: http://www.mobygames.com/game/barbarian & http://www.mobygames.com/game/terrorpods
A link for more info on Psygnosis at wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psygnosis and if you remember them and are a fan, definitely check this superb French tribute site: http://psygnosisamiga.free.fr/
I’ll also be adding an addendum to this post with a contribution from John Coulthart (feuilleton) whose prepping a lengthy in depth feature on Roger for his own site http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/
