Posted by Lyn on June 20, 2006 at 16:43:07 from 198.45.19.38 user LynMellone.
In Reply to: Re: SA series and copyright posted by Robert Thompson on June 19, 2006 at 21:41:10:
The problem with using a different illustrator for S&A is that AR had some specific ideas about how he wanted to portray certain scenes, and in his case, he was not only an author but an illustrator. If the reader has not seen those illustrations, he or she is missing out on part of what AR wanted to communicate, what was in his imagination as he wrote the story.
I think of the Dog's Home, for instance. The first version of PM I read here in the U.S. had *no* illustrations, and my impression of what this "Dog's Home" building was were very different from what AR had intended. I wish I could have seen his illustrations.
Another example (which I mentioned in some previous thread or other) would be the North Pole building in WH. I had no clue what this was really supposed to look like.
If the reader already knows AR's illustrations, it can be nice to see another artist's renditions in comparison, but only in comparison, not "instead of."
[OT: I find the same to be true of the illustrations done by J.R.R. Tolkien for The Hobbit and LOTR. Other illustrators may have done a marvelous job (I love the work of Alan Lee and John Howe), but I want to know what was in the imagination of the creator. The imagination of another artist is only secondary.]