Kazu
Kibuishi
New covers
Kazu Kibushi then moves onto showing his work (which he constructed digitally, trying to make them look like real paintings), sharing that he’s a Hufflepuff (like Brian Selznick) and said that Harry Potter has touched his life. His work on the cover art helped him get through terrible illness (“in some ways, Harry Potter saved my life”).
Well, when I was a kid, I wanted to design rides, like Disneyland rides. I wanted to be an Imagineer. And I like action movies. I like seeing movement depicted in pictures. And so I’ve been working on this style that would allow me to express movement, and I think Amulet is essentially the first project that I worked on where I was putting that to use. So there’s a lot in my Amulet series that is based around movement, so when I did the Harry Potter covers, I essentially just did my regular style and applied it to the books. The third cover was actually the first one that I sketched, where Scholastic said, “We’d like you to do all the covers like that,” and that one had the most movement in it.
I drew only one Harry Potter-related fan art, for a gallery show many years ago. The covers for Harry Potter remind me a little bit of the Flight anthology covers
Strangely enough, I did a painting for a Harry Potter tribute show at Gallery Nucleus, but it is nothing like the work on the covers. In fact, if someone saw that piece and was told that the artist who did those also drew the new covers, people would be left scratching their heads. David Saylor asked me to try out for this project because of my work on the covers from the “Flight” anthology.
David Saylor, Creative Director at Scholastic, was the original designer, along with artist Mary Grandpre, of the Scholastic editions of Harry Potter. He also founded Scholastic’s Graphix imprint, which publishes my “Amulet” series.He sent me an email asking if I would be interested in trying out for this project, and my immediate reaction was like that of everyone else -- that no one should do this!
The short story is that David Saylor, the Creative Director who was in charge of Harry Potter back when it was originally released by Scholastic, is also my Creative Director on Amulet. And in passing, he just asked me if I would be interested in trying out for this project. Initially I was hesitant. To be honest, I just didn’t — I was kind of curmudgeonly a fan of Harry Potter, thinking, “Well they don’t need new covers! The Mary GrandPré covers are fantastic! I love them!” But then I understood what they were looking to do, and that was reintroduce the series, the way we see it in hindsight, to a new generation of readers. When I realized that’s what they were looking to do, I got a little bit more excited, and we did submit some samples that they really liked.
The project came together over several months. David Saylor, creative director at Scholastic – and head of Graphix, the imprint that publishes Amulet – is the original designer of the US editions of Harry Potter. He asked me if I would submit samples to see if I could illustrate and redesign the covers. This initially took me by surprise because I love the originals and thought they shouldn’t really touch those, but then I began to realize that many of the kids reading my books weren’t old enough to be Harry Potter readers (something I confirmed on recent visits to elementary schools and libraries). They are just beginning to read longer and more complex works of fiction, and what better set of books to introduce than Harry Potter?
The whole thing is timed for the books 15th anniversary
When I was asked to submit samples, I initially hesitated because I didn’t want to see [Mary GrandPré’s art] reinterpreted! However, I felt that if I were to handle the project, I could bring something to it that many other designers and illustrators probably couldn’t, and that was that I was also a writer of my own series of middle grade fiction. As an author myself, I tried to answer the question, ‘If I were the author of the books – and they were like my own children – how would I want them to be seen years from now?’ When illustrating the covers, I tried to think of classic perennial paperback editions of famous novels and how those illustrations tend to feel. In a way, the project became a tribute to both Harry Potter and the literary classics.
Ellie Berger, President, Scholastic Trade Publishing, said, “The brilliant artist Kazu Kibuishi offers his unique vision of the world of Harry Potter, making each cover an incredible adventure that will transport new readers just discovering Harry Potter for the first time directly into the rich world of J.K. Rowling’s imagination.”
Each of the new covers will portray a distinct and memorable moment from that particular book.
In an interview, Ellie Berger, president of Scholastic Trade Publishing, says the new covers aren’t meant to replace the original ones by Mary GrandPré, which still will be used on hardcovers and less expensive mass-market paperback editions.
But, she says, “we thought it was time for a fresh approach” for the trade paperbacks “as of a way of attracting the interest of a new generation of 8- and 9-year-olds who may know Harry mostly through the movies.”
Kibuishi added, “I could bring something to it that many other designers and illustrators probably couldn’t, and that was that I was also a writer of my own series of middle-grade fiction.”
“As an author myself, I tried to answer the question, ‘If I were the author of the books - and they were like my own children - how would I want them to be seen years from now?’ When illustrating the covers, I tried to think of classic perennial paperback editions of famous novels and how those illustrations tend to feel. In a way, the project became a tribute to both ‘Harry Potter’ and the literary classics.”
It was so much fun! I don’t think any artist can ever expect to be a part of a project like this, and even while I was submitting samples to Scholastic, it didn’t seem possible that I would be working on it. In fact, I honestly thought I was a bad choice for the project! My initial reaction was “I don’t think anyone should redo the covers, and I feel bad for the poor sap who has the responsibility to do it.” You can credit David Saylor for having the vision to bring this together. It only dawned on me while I was already working on the covers that I might actually be a good fit for this project.
Kazu also explained how he wanted to keep the familiar logo designed by Mary GrandPré that can be found on the original Scholastic covers, the movie franchise, and the new Harry Potter and the Cursed Child artwork. When the logo was sent to him by Scholastic, Kazu actually received an original hand-drawn copy that needed cleaning up. He shared his reverence for such an important Harry Potter artifact.
One thing he didn’t touch was the Harry Potter logo. It was created by David Saylor, the designer of the original Scholastic editions of the books. Saylor also hired Mary GrandPré to illustrate the covers (her illustrations will still appear on the hardcover and digest paperback editions of the series), so in many ways he defined the Harry Potter aesthetic in the United States. Saylor has since started Graphix, a Scholastic imprint for comics, which publishes Kibuishi’s Amulet series.
Well, in my case, because I’m an author at Scholastic and I’ve been working with Scholastic for so long, David just kept putting the keys in my hands. [laughs] Even if I asked for feedback, they would just put the ball right back in my court and say, “Well, what do you think?” And David is really smart about that, too, because when you do that for an artist, they put more into it. And that’s what I did. I put as much into it as I possibly could in the timeframe that I had. It was a very short window to make these covers. But it was enjoyable for me because it was just solving a problem. I didn’t have to design the problem; the problem already existed. The covers needed to be made. There’s probably a new audience. They’re probably my readers! So it made it a little bit easier for someone like me because I know my readers really well, and now they’re growing up to the age where they’re going to be introduced to Harry Potter. So I just thought, “I know them well enough that I can draw for them to introduce the series, and I’ll just do that.” So it was a lot of responsibility, for me, but at the same time... Because as a writer, I have to create problems to solve. And I didn’t have to create that because it already existed. I wasn’t part of the process of inventing Harry Potter; I’m just celebrating it. And so it was just enjoyable most of the time. I wasn’t really stressed.
The color choices grew out of a couple of factors: paying tribute to Mary GrandPré’s work and the mood of the scene.
When I did the Harry Potter covers, I did up to 130 drafts of the covers. Sometimes I would get lost, and I’d have to track back to Version 35 in a sequence of cover designs and then go back to that and find my way back to the road. And I essentially just work with David Saylor at Scholastic, and I would go back and forth with him. I’d show him the cover and we both knew something was off. Then I’d look to see where I’d made the error: Where did I get off the path? And then [I would] go back to that and rebuild from there. So for Harry Potter... It’s rare for me to spend that much time on a single illustration. It was really nice to be able to do that. Most of the time I don’t have time to do that.
I did not re-read the books until pretty late in the process. My first several sets of roughs were done completely from memory. It wasn’t until I was working on the details of the scenes that I had to really comb over the text to make sure I got everything right. Thankfully, Cheryl Klein at Arthur A. Levine Books helped vet the images to make sure they were accurate. When I started painting the images, I was really trying to capture a feeling I had about each book. I wanted to capture the subtext, meaning and emotion first, and work out the details later. I write my books much the same way.
The approach I chose for this project was to capture a scene, but I think that’s because this is what I naturally enjoy doing anyway. I love creating spaces. When I draw or write or design, I am always working to create a really great space to be in. I tried versions of the covers that were more like movie posters, where you see the characters posed in front of scenes, objects, and other characters from the books, but it just didn’t feel right.I decided instead to approach the design of the books as a series of windows into the world of Harry Potter.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
With the reveal for the first book on Good Morning America
I tried to pick an important and iconic scene from each book that conveyed the mood or feeling of each story. Sorcerer’s Stone signified Harry’s foray into a fantastic world, so I chose Diagon Alley to be that gateway.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Each cover Kibuishi created for his 15th anniversary artwork went through about 100 variations — evolutions that took dramatic directions, like Chamber of Secrets moving from a horrifying basilisk battle to the “cup of tea” coziness of the Burrow.
Kibuishi decided on the elaborate home of Ron Weasley, best friend to Harry Potter, to put on the cover. Kibuishi says the setting is a place of comfort for Potter before battling his main antagonist, ‘He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.’
Kazu shared his hesitation to take on illustrating these anniversary covers, since he loved Mary GrandPré’s work. He revealed that he ultimately accepted the job because he recognized that a new generation, like his Amulet readers, might be finding these books for the first time and would have a set of art for themselves. He showed me the art that got him the job, his cover for Flight Volume 3, which bears a resemblance to his cover of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
Chamber of Secrets felt like a cup of tea, so I picked the Burrow, a cozy scene.
[Graphix editorial director] David [Saylor] came to me and asked me. I was kind of surprised, like anyone else would’ve been--”I’m the cartoon guy. Why would you want me to do it?” He had a poster of one of my “Flight” covers on the wall, and he said that when he looked up at that, he thought, “That’s what we should do.” It was actually really good to know that, because the Chamber of Secrets cover was actually influenced quite a bit by the Flight Volume 3 cover on his wall.
The second at Book Expo America
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
It was the Prisoner of Azkaban cover that changed the game for the artist. “This one was the first sketch that David Saylor at Scholastic looked at and asked me if I could do the rest of the covers this way,” said Kibuishi. The evocative cover art in question: Harry casting his Patronus to conquer a Dementor on the waterfront at Hogwarts, an iconic scene in that story about which Kibuishi noted, “There was no other scene I could imagine painting.” The mood and style of the third cover became the basis for the rest of the covers Kibuishi digitally painted for the series.
My earliest sketches did feature the characters posing in front of scenes, but when I thought of The Prisoner of Azkaban, I couldn’t really imagine any other image than what you see in the final, with the Patronus and the dementors. That one came to me quickly. It didn’t really fit with the rest of the early sketches, but I just couldn’t imagine the cover being any different. That’s how much that particular scene stuck out in my mind. When Scholastic gave me feedback, they said they want all of them to be like that one, and asked me to take that approach with the rest of the covers. I was so happy to be able to take this approach.
Prisoner of Azkaban was about self-discovery and the realization of one’s potential, so the Patronus scene felt like the clear choice.
Kazu: Yeah, that sketch was, like, three minutes. [laughs] I didn’t touch it. I just sent that and they said, “We want you to do all the covers like that.” And so I worked on it from a gesture drawing.
For anyone who has read the book, the scene—a figure summons his patronus—could be considered a bit of a spoiler, but given the passage of time, and the appearance of the movie version in 2004, Kibuishi wasn’t too worried about giving anything away. “When you look at the cover, you don’t know who’s in the foreground and who’s in the background,” he says. “A lot of people already know, but I think a new reader will look at this and not feel that it was a spoiler. They would wonder what was going on.”
The third at the LeakyCon convention
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
The fourth cover at the American Library Association convention.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
The cover for book five, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, apparently didn’t have an official unveiling because fans found it online earlier this month. I missed it, but that’s life with a newborn for you. The new cover shows Harry and his pals leaving Hogwarts on the thestrals.
“Devoted Harry Potter fans scour the web every day for any news about the series, and we were happy to have them discover and reveal the fifth new cover by the talented Kazu Kibuishi,” said Stacy Lellos, VP, Marketing, Scholastic Trade Publishing.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
His favorite character? Dumbledore!
The sixth new Harry Potter cover by Kazu Kibuishi was revealed today at Comic-Con International in San Diego. David Saylor (Vice President, Creative Director, Scholastic) unveiled the cover, which shows Harry and Dumbledore standing on a rock, near the entrance to a particular cave.
In each of the new cover illustrations, Kibuishi perfectly captures a pivotal moment from that particular book. For Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the artwork depicts Harry and Dumbledore standing on a treacherous rock above the rushing waves and spray of salt air, near the entrance to a cave that holds secrets and dangers that Harry can’t begin to imagine.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Pull out your Marauder’s Map and Apparate (or fly your Firebolt) to Scholastic Headquarters on July 31st at 12 p.m. and celebrate the 15th Anniversary of the Harry Potter series in a magical way! Join us as we unveil the all-new cover for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final of the seven new trade paperback editions illustrated by New York Times bestselling author and illustrator, Kazu Kibuishi. Fans, old and new, can meet Kazu Kibuishi and Arthur Levine, editor of all U.S. Harry Potter books, see Hagrid, enjoy wizardry crafts and lots more magical fun...PLUS participate in the Harry Potter costume contest! The first 50 muggles in costume will receive a lithograph of the new book cover signed by Kazu! (No need to stop at Gringotts for money – the event is free!).
The Scholastic Store hosted an exciting event to celebrate the unveiling of the new cover of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The Scholastic Store party was packed with Harry Potter fans of all ages, a welcoming Hagrid and live snakes, toads and owls. Hundreds of fans, many of whom were dressed as their favorite Harry Potter characters, joined in a host of fun activities including potion and wand-making and thrilled at the chance to be the first to see the new book trailer that will appear in theaters this summer. Fifty lucky fans received lithographs of the seventh book cover signed by Kibuishi.
The back covers
That was a pretty late-game decision on my part. Scholastic gave me some quotes they had from reviews of the books that I could place on the back covers, and it was suggested we just put some stuff that was featured in the books on the back covers. The thing is, the back cover accounts for nearly half of the book jacket’s real estate, and I thought it wasteful not to use it for something more significant. So I had a cover that I did for Goblet of Fire that I liked but didn’t use, and I put it on the back cover to see how it looked. I liked it, so I presented the idea of doing a full series of the back covers showing the progression of Harry through the years, and Scholastic approved enthusiastically. It was partly inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s Artificial Intelligence project that was eventually finished by Steven Spielberg. The idea for that movie was to originally show a life lived through the years as it was occurring, by filming an actor every year for many years. Well, this sort of happened with the Harry Potter movies, and it is reflected in the stories, so I thought why not show it in a sequence of images? As for the quotes, I felt that we really didn’t need a review to tell us anything about these books, so I decided to use quotes from the books themselves that reflected the journey of each book’s story and painted a corresponding scene.
I shared with Kazu that I admired his choice to illustrate scenes for the back covers with Harry centered with his back to the viewer. I feel that this really captures the feeling of being at one with Harry’s perspective in the books. When I held up the back cover of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire to give this compliment to Kazu, he lit up and revealed that this was the illustration that started the trend.
In fact, Kazu explained that this particular scene of Harry alone preparing to face the Hungarian Horntail was originally a contender for the cover of the fourth book. While he felt that the cover should be more lively and colorful to match the spectacular events in the story inside, this picture was so well-liked that the decision was made to make all the back covers follow suit. Kazu pointed out how you can trace Harry’s growth as he goes from a small 11-year-old peering into the Mirror of Erised to finally standing tall in the final battle against Voldemort.
When Kazu shared with me that these back covers were created in less than a week, I couldn’t believe it. He explained how very quick the whole process was and how he had a lot of creative control. It was his decision to omit reviews for the back of the book, posing the question, who needs to read what others think about Harry Potter? Kazu himself chose the quotes on the back of these books.
The boxset
Kibuishi’s complete box-set art, meanwhile, is loaded with the kind of Easter eggs that aren’t just a clandestine delight for Harry Potter fans, but keep up a tradition that original American illustrator GrandPré began with her cover art, embedding little gems and call-outs to the story inside her wide wraparound pieces. Kibuishi took it a step further and embedded secret appearances from his own world inside Rowling’s, all within the confines of a Hogsmeade-set painting. “I’m actually in there — I didn’t make it into Hogwarts, but I am working at Zonko’s,” Kibuishi pointed out, although you’ll have to pick up the box set in person to see all the details. “David Saylor is actually running the cash register there. And right above us is J.K. Rowling, working on the book. Arthur Levine is holding a book up in one of the windows in the far left, up top, along with his assistant, Cheryl Klein, who helped me a lot with these covers. And my wife is actually walking up towards us, pretty far in the back. She’s there with my assistant Jason, who insisted he was a Gryffindor.”
Kazu included some Easter eggs in the art wrapping around the box set. Among the recognizable cast of characters, including Draco Malfoy and Luna Lovegood, you can also find people from Kazu’s personal and professional life. Kazu pointed out his wife Amy and some of his friends in the foreground of the gorgeous art of the Hogwarts Express as it approaches Hogsmeade. He informed me that everyone included had the opportunity to choose their Hogwarts House for the art. I can only imagine how truly magical it must be to know that your likeness lives in official Harry Potter artwork.
Also included in the box set art is publisher Arthur Levine, who is holding up a book in the windows above Honeydukes, and his assistant; you can find them below the flying owls. Vice President and Creative Director at Scholastic, David Saylor, is working the cash register at Zonko’s. Kazu also depicted himself as a kid working for David; he is carrying books to the left of Albus Dumbledore. Kazu insisted during our live Instagram chat that he didn’t feel like he would get into Hogwarts. Finally, Kazu pointed out J.K. Rowling herself, writing away at her desk in the windows above Zonko’s.