Fantastic VisionsLovers of Christian speculative fiction do not restrict themselves to the amazing worlds depicted by talented authors. We gravitate as well to those artists who can, through their gifts of vision and art, show us worlds and beings we've never imagined The artists whose galleries are linked to below usher us to worlds of fantasy, science fiction, and pure speculative wonder.
A Marcher Lord GalleryThe best place to find, all in one place, 20+ Christian artists who do speculative art is to procure a copy of A Marcher Lord Gallery. This virtual coffee table e-book is an extravaganza of speculative art by Christian artists. You'll find more than 100 pieces of original and pre-existing art from twenty artists, such as Frank Hettick (who did the main painting on WhereTheMapEnds), Kirk DouPonce (who did all the covers for the first season of Marcher Lord Press), and Todd Mueller (who did the image above). You'll find paintings, 3D renders, dolls, sculpture, photography, charcoal sketches, line art, and more, all by Christian artists who have been way off the edge of the map. Many of the artists listed below are included in the book. A Marcher Lord Gallery is available as a PDF file via download or on a CD-ROM. To purchase it, go to the Marcher Lord Press store. Christian Speculative ArtistsFrank HettickThe first place to go is the Sky High Gallery to see the work of Frank Hettick, who has graciously contributed several pieces to this site—most notably the amazing piece, "Early Explorations," which forms the banner for every page of this site. Frank's space art seems to perfectly capture the ethos of WhereTheMapEnds.com. 
The Call of AslanThe next place to go is The Call of Aslan. It's a directory of Christian fantasy and science fiction artists. There are links to several professional artists and a whole section devoted to rising artists. A great site. DeviantMISSIONDeviantMISSION is a Christian artists' corner of DeviantART. Check it out. Lots of great artists there.
Michael W. CarrollMike Carroll is an internationally known space and paleontological artist whose art has been featured in Time, National Geographic, and Astronomy magazines and has been aired on Nova, Cosmos, and various TV specials. And he's a Christian. Pretty cool.
Check out his gallery here. Sara M. ButcherSome delightful illustrations here.
Note that Sara has in her lefthand column a list of artists you might want to check out. Her gallery is here. Carmen KeysSome nice angels and fairy tale illustrations here.
Rachel MarksRachel is a friend and WhereTheMapEnds subscriber. She's also a writer of Christian speculative fiction. Check out her Web page and gallery.
Hanna SandvigHanna doesn't do exclusively speculative art, but she's a gifted artist who loves Christian speculative fiction. Great, fresh style. See her gallery here.
Duncan LongDuncan is a talented illustrator and also a novelist. Check out his site.
Michelle J.A. McIntyreMichelle's Fantasy Realm Creations has some great work, too.
Jeff Gerke / Jefferson ScottOkay, I know I'm no artist. I have no delusions. But I've been having such great fun with two free 3D graphics and animation programs, Daz|Studio and Bryce, that I wanted to share some of the pieces I've created. Sometimes I get lucky and pull together a composition that I think is worth looking at. Here's one.
There are more at the gallery over at Marcher Lord Press. The cool thing about 3D programs like this is that you can download or purchase great-looking pieces or figures or clothing or whatever and then put them together into any scene you can imagine. That's always been my situation: I can think of the cool scenes but I have no ability to render them—except through words. Now I can fairly quickly put together a pretty good facsimile of what I'm trying to depict. Extreme coolness. I mean, geek-level coolness. Yeah, that much. Kimberly M. SponaugleKim does children's books. Visit her site.
Aaron SiddallCheck out Aaron's site.
Matt MarcyVisit Matt's site.
Kurt Rickerd Here's Kurt's site. Kurt does some wonderful 3D renders.
Tim Baron Tim's work is quite polished. Check out his site.
Secular Speculative ArtistsActually, several of these folks may indeed be Christians, but they don't advertise their art in that way. Talk about your amazing worlds. The first place to go here is The Shannon Associates. This company is an artist representation firm that specializes in illustrators of all kinds. The link will take you to those artists who classify themselves as science fiction or fantasy artists.
Here are some of my favorite illustrators represented by The Shannon Associates:
I went to Comic-CON 2007 (yeah, I'm a geek; proud of it, too) and met a number of excellent illustrators whose work I hadn't heard of before. Here are links to their sites:
Another great place for speculative art is Spectrum, an annual collection of the best in contemporary fantastic art. Of course, it's definitely not coming from a Christian orientation. Lots of the art could be considered lewd. There's not much at their Web site. However, they have a wonderful links page that points you to terrific speculative art sites, like: You have to go see the work of Kees Veenenbos. Kees is a Dutch artist who uses the rendering software Terragen, plus real-world data, to create unbelievable images of Mars and other solar system neighbors.
Kees has been kind to me by responding to my inquiries over the last couple of years. He even created a custom Mars render for me because I wanted to see what it would look like with water. This from an Emmy-award nominated artist whose work is regularly featured in National Geographic, Telescope, and Astronomy. I urge you to visit his site and maybe even drop him a note if you like his stuff. Christian Graphic Designers (i.e., The Guys Who Do Book Covers)I count it my great privilege to be friends with several of the leading cover designers in the Christian publishing industry. A visit to their sites is a real treat.
Other Weird StuffYou gotta love a title like that, huh? In this section I want to highlight creative folks who are exploring Christian speculative stories through media besides novels. Take an hour and explore the strange and wonderful worlds they're imagining. Sites Dedicated to Christian Science Fiction and FantasyI have visited all these sites. Several of them provided ideas and inspiration, and certainly encouragement, to me as I was constructing WhereTheMapEnds.com. If you're hankering for more speculative spelunking than you can shake a magical staff at, these are the places to go. I intend to come back to this list at some point in the future and give a fuller description and better title for each site listed below. For now, just go exploring!
Online Magazines with Christian Speculative ThemesThese have been recommended to me by site guests like yourself. I've checked them all out and they look cool. Most of them were clearly Christian. Some, though, didn't look unChristian; I just couldn't find any Christian content on my very quick look. But they all looked fun! Christian Comics and Graphic NovelsDoug TenNapel's Graphic Novels:
ForeverQuest--Graphic novel written and illustrated by Ken Raney (husband of Christian novelist Deborah Raney).
Jim Lion's "Dave Adventure" online graphic novel PistolFist: Revolutionary Warrior online comic Christian MangaNextManga (Christian Japanese manga based on the Gospels) Christian Computer GamingEternal Forces (Left Behind Game) Foundations of Hope (Christian MMORPG by Leathel Grody) Holy Lands RPG (not a computer game) Astral Empires (Christian SF battle game) Christian Animation StudiosChristian Machinima StudiosWhat is "machinima," you ask? Machinima is a relatively new art form created at the intersection of computer animation, filmmaking, and computer games. Many computer game engines include editing, or "modding," tools that allow industrious gamers to make their own movies using the look of the game in question. These innovative filmmakers write scripts, shoot their movies, edit, include voice acting, compose soundtracks, and the rest. It's real-time animation (courtesy of the game engine) and garage filmmaking, and it's wide open to any speculative idea you can imagine. GospelSimsNote that when I last checked (February 2007), the GospelSims Web page was gone. :-( Christian Speculative PodcastSpirit Blade is a "science fiction audio experience." According to the site, it is "a full-cast audio drama that uses cinematic sound design, a pulse pounding electronic score, and dynamic acting and musical performances to draw listeners into another world: A future where the government determines the spiritual beliefs of its citizens, and only a few rebellious 'Seekers of Truth' remain to free the world from deception." Sounds cool to me. Check it out. |
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