The Man Who Makes Me Look Good
by John Bachkosky (3/1/2022)
Hello again!
For those of you that took the time to scroll around on my new site, thank you! While exploring, I hope that you noticed some of the artwork. All of the art for the projects on this page—both book covers as well as the album cover and logo for The Bards—was done by one man: Anthony Celli.
In 2020, when I released The Last Wizard, I put together a cover that I thought looked pretty cool using a picture I took of the moon. (There was, at one point, an idea to ask readers to "moon" me with their copies of the book via social media, but I’m glad that idea was shelved.) When I went to do the rewrite a year later—after taking some time to learn how to write a novel properly—I decided that the book needed a fresh and more professional look.
Enter Anthony.
I sent him a copy of The Last Wizard, and he came back with some incredibly inspired sketches that I thought would have worked well on their own as covers. When we picked one and he fully illustrated it, I was blown away. Anthony brought to life the words that I put down on the page. In his own words, “While I was reading The Last Wizard, I could vividly see the events in my head as they unfolded.”
Naturally, a few months later, I had to make sure that the cover for Kingdom’s End was done by the same man. They had to match, and we agreed on keeping some elements from the TLW’s cover to tie them together. See if you can find them!
And then along came The Bards, who had just completed their first album and were in need of an album cover. Who better to turn to than Anthony? I sent him the songs and once again the sketches he produced were art in their own right. Along with the album cover, Anthony also designed our logo for us, based on a horrible slap-dash idea I put together in MS Paint. As evidenced below, Anthony is a master of turning not only my words into art, but also my horrible attempts at visual mediums into professional-level branding.
So, thanks to Anthony, everything I have created looks far better than it has any right to. With The Bards going “on tour” in the coming months (check the Tour Dates tab for show locations and times), I am especially grateful for Anthony, who has helped us look as good as we (hopefully) sound!
These days, Anthony spends parts of his days working on commissions both big and small. In between those, he works on his personal projects and is also learning new creative software like Live2d and Blender. If you want to check out his incredible work, you can find him on Instagram at: @ant_jams
That’s all for now!
JB6
