Nick
Filbert

Harry Potter and
the Philosopher’s Stone

“I thought there had to be something else to get more hype [for these books]. Then, an idea to use the work of a local illustrator came to mind,” Dini (Diniarty “Dini” Pandia, senior fiction editor of Gramedia Pustaka Utama publisher who is responsible for the Indonesian edition of Harry Potter) told The Jakarta Post.  She stated that the agent from Rowling’s side had initially offered to simply purchase one of the existing covers. “But, that makes me more eager to create an Indonesian cover. Who knows, maybe it could go international later?” Dini said The new cover version is scheduled to be released gradually, with the first batch containing first and second volume of the series to be released in the Jabodetabek area on March 13 or 20. The book will later be distributed in other parts of Indonesia. The book’s final volume is slated for June 1, or 25 days before the 20th anniversary of the first Harry Potter release in the United Kingdom.

I have been doing this almost all my life. I have been drawing since I was little. I am just lucky that I have very supportive parents who have always supported me to do what I like the most. When I was a kid, I competed in tons of drawing competitions that kept me interested and propelled me to do art to this day.

I have started drawing since I was little, since kindergarten to elementary school I have often participated in drawing competitions, even though I was absent in junior high and high school, I finally took a major related to drawing and finally I chose animation when I was in college because of my parents’ advice, after college I worked at one of the big illustration studios in Indonesia. In 2015, I decided to become  an independent artist  until now.

I majored in animation art in college. At college, besides learning techniques, I also learned about the industry in general. I realized how diverse the art industry actually was. Because drawing was my strongest skill and I believed in myself, at that time, I already knew that I would pursue illustration.

It’s pretty much the same as a lot of Harry Potter fans around the world. When the first book came around I read it and loved every part of it. So I have read all the books and watched all the movies countless times. Right now, I am working with a publisher who has the rights to Harry Potter books in Indonesia. My editor challenged me to make a proposal for the Indonesian cover designs and of course, I said yes to the challenge!

The Harry Potter books have a sense of nostalgia and have a deep enough sentimentality for me. I remember the book being very useful to me as an artist and other children in  general . Because before the  Harry Potter films  were released, we were challenged to imagine things that had never been depicted physically/visually. The way the author JK Rowling poured out her imagination by creating a new world full of imagination was extraordinary. What’s more interesting is, I feel like I grew up with the characters in the  Harry Potter series.

The amount of characters and objects from the book depicted on this cover is astounding. Interestingly, because this was released with the Fantastic Beasts films out in the world, Chandrawienata took that as a starting point: 

Fantastic Beasts are not only a complementary subject but also an integral part of the Harry Potter universe. That is why I took Fantastic Beasts as the core idea for the Indonesian Harry Potter book covers and centred one beast on each.

The theme that I want to push in these covers is the fantastic beasts of the Harry Potter world. I have thought a lot about which beast I want to put on each cover. It has to be one of the most prominent beasts in the respective novel without spoiling the story for the reader. So it won’t just be birds. The covers will show different beasts as the books go on.

I also did research and it turned out that there was no cover that highlighted the beast version. From each book I looked for what beasts were the most prominent.

Uniquely every beasts in each cover represents how varied the fauna is in Indonesia.

Moreover from the way J.K. Rowling describes the Fantastic Beasts in writing to make this theme very unique to be the main theme in this cover version of Indonesia.

The concept that I prioritized in making  this Harry Potter cover illustration  was Fantastic Beasts, I feel that Fantastic Beasts has never been the main focus in making  Harry Potter covers  in other countries, even though Fantastic Beasts is one of the important elements in the  Harry Potter series.  I also added a little batik accent in the color selection, also in the philosophy of the work that requires perseverance and perfect detail.

As well as this, Chandrawienata leant into the traditional artwork of Indonesia which accounts for the level of detail: 

The other main idea was to incorporate the spirit of Indonesian batik artwork, which is made meticulously and skilfully. So I made these book covers into giant continuous drawings by adding lots of characters from the books to make them super detailed. As a finishing touch, I also added a little bit of a head turn “animation” to the beasts to make the covers more dynamic. Combining these ideas into single art pieces was definitely a challenge, a really fun challenge.

For one book it usually takes around a week or more, including the [initial] idea, rough sketches, final line art and coloring. The term “successful” differs from one person to another. I’d like to think that I am successful on my own term [sic], which means that I can do what I like in my own way. And this thought came around since early this year.

Diniarty “Dini” Pandia, senior fiction editor of Gramedia Pustaka Utama publisher who is responsible for the Indonesian edition of Harry Potter: They don’t just give approval. For almost three months of preparation, they were asked why they used this color, why this font is like this, it was asked in detail and there had to be a reason. The first and second editions were quite difficult to approve, but in the next editions, the approval only took one week.

The challenge is where I have to find a middle ground between producing idealistic works that fit my style and ego as an artist and works that are liked by the public and sellable. Here, my two years of experience in an illustration studio really helped me in making decisions because I am used to it and know which works sell and which don’t.

On the cover of the first Harry Potter book, he included local elements that differentiated it from other covers. Characteristically busy and with brown colors that tend to be batik, Nic’s cover finally passed the selection by the publisher Gramedia Pustaka Utama (GPU).