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The Black Pyramid

- 'no man has ever survived...'

These pictures are a selection from a series of 40 or so black and white illustrations I did for 'The Black Pyramid', one of the Skyfall series of 'advanced fantasy' gamebooks published by Armada in the late 80s and written by David Tant. David's imaginative writing was easy to illustrate (although the timescales were very tight - usually around a month or so to complete the full set of illustrations).

The mix of Egyptian and high-tech in this book's adventure is interesting, I think, coming as it did some time before the release of the 'Stargate' film and subsequent spin-off TV series.

I wanted to get away from the 'sketchy' style that illustrations in these books often have, going for a denser, more atmospheric look, while keeping the drawings clean enough to print successfully on poor quality paper. It must have worked, as I was asked to do the other books in the series. Sadly, other commitments meant I was only able to do one more - The Garden of Madness. The original pages were done in pen & ink at A4 size and reduced by 50% for publication.

Click on the links and / or thumbnails below to view the picture in more detail.