Let’s go down the memory lane for a ride. Imagine you ‘re back in the 1990s, considering 90s nostalgia is extremely prevalent in our Lord 2020 year. It shouldn’t be hard to do. There are TV shows set in that period, fashion in the 90s is making a comeback. And we’re all doing our own highlights because of, you know, the pandemic around the world. We should even look back at the art of the 90s and think about the book series
This was, back then, a different time. We just didn’t have CGI yet but art certainly widened its horizons and the concept of morphing appeared. And when we saw the coverings of Animorph with depictions of children morphing into animals – it blew our minds. Not just because it looked super cool, we never saw anything like that before.
It looks incredibly 90s in modern times and so odd it is almost humiliating, but
It was the most stunning thing we’ve ever seen back then. This is possibly why to this day the Animorph series still have a cultic following.
7 Times DC’s Joker Actually Was The Good Guy
Remember the whole premise of this series?
It was all about these youngsters, who were given the power to transform into any animal. They touched to battle the aliens and protect the Earth. A stupid notion, right? Yet, like 60 books plus spinoffs, there was. And it certainly deserves praise from the artist who did most of the covers. I mean, he ‘s practically in charge of blowing our mind with tho.
But here’s a fun fact: the artist, David Mattingly, never even tried morphing before getting the gig to do. Animorphs, but the concept seemed too exciting and cool. And the chance was too good to pass up so he just went for it and the publishers were so pleased with the result. They quit working with the guy who did the first few and hired David to do the rest.
Surprisingly enough, before making covers art, he had not read the novels, he just read them afterwards.
William, too, never personally met or spoken to the publisher of the books. He got presents from them for Christmas each year though, it was very sweet.
The reason for not meeting the author was that the publishers never want to meet the author and the person doing the cover work, because then the artist could get influenced by the author who obviously has an idea of what their book cover will look like. However that idea usually isn’t exactly what the publisher wants, so they hire an artist to do their own thing and they also want the
The publishing world is so incredibly strange. This is a collaborative mechanism on the one hand, but theoretically such collaborations also occur without direct contact between the participants. But who knows what it would be like for Animorphs, if the mechanism were different?
Have these photos brought some nostalgic feelings back to you? What books have you liked? Are you a fan of the book series or were you one of those odd kids who really enjoyed the weird and even later Disney show than the books look now? Or have you, somehow, missed this phenomenon somehow and this is news?
Animorphs are either way a big part of the 90 ‘s period and this artwork, no matter how weird and amusing it looks today, has basically taken sci-fi art to a whole new stage.
