Get Your Arts To Mars

 I've just realised, reading the comments about Jeff Waynes's album, that the Roger Dean illustrations are covered in his second art book - 'Magnetic Storm'. 

The first volume 'Views' was released in the back end of the seventies and includes his seminal work on the sequence of 'Yes' albums and other rock album classics and helped cement his artwork as the style of the period. Magnetic Storm followed much later and unfortunately, I think that Dean's ship had sailed a little by then, having been overtaken by other artists such as the great Rodney Matthews who illustrated the Michael Moorcock books and Peter Jones, who cornered the sci fi novel market.

Storms devotes an entire chapter to Dean's work on WOTW and shows his interpretation of the war machines. Unfortunately, as much as I love Dean's work, I don't think it's suitable for this story, as the tripods look a little too bird like and cumbersome. The art did however find its way into an Amiga computer game during the 16bit era, with game giant Psygnosis, who used publisher Paper Tiger's almost complete catalogue of fantasy art as the basis of both the games and the gorgeous box artwork.

Meanwhile, here are some shots of Dean's artwork from Magnetic Storms book.