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| A post by Mary Fan |
They're great fun - a way to see an artist's interpretation of a favorite character and see a book's cast come to life. I know some authors don't like seeing their characters' faces, preferring to leave that up to the imagination, but personally, I've always been a big fan of character art, whether official (e.g. on a cover) or unofficial (e.g. fan art).
The last time I finished a series, the JANE COLT trilogy, I commissioned a set of illustrations from artist Fauzy Zulvikar Firmansyah to celebrate:
This was before I really knew what character cards were, so I didn't really do anything with them other than post them on social media and print them out for my wall at home.
I just finished another series, the STARSWEPT trilogy, and I decided that this time I was going to do character cards. Partly for marketing purposes, but mostly just for fun as a reward to myself for completing the trilogy and for any fans out there who might enjoy them.
I hired the fantastic artist Niru Sky, whose fantastic character work I'd spotted in my Instagram feed a while back, to draw up a series of portraits featuring 8 major characters from the series and then hand them printed as cards:
It was really amazing getting to work with such a talented artist to bring these characters to life - to get to see them after spending years visualizing them in my head. I felt Niru really captured not only the characters' physical traits, but their personalities as well.
So what do you do with character cards once they're printed? Why, you give them away to fans, of course! Outside of subscription boxes, some people use character cards as a preorder incentive (e.g. "send proof of preorder and receive a set of cards") or a raffle to grow their followings (e.g. "RT and follow me for a chance to enter a set of cards").
I decided, however, that I just wanted to give them to anyone out there who might like the STARSWEPT series enough to post about it, so I set up an image challenge instead, essentially saying "post pics of the Starswept trilogy's book covers and get a set of cards," on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram:
Guess what, y’all?? Starswept character cards, featuring gorgeous artwork by @Niruskyart, are printed and ready to go! Which means it’s time for...
— Mary Fan 🐲 范诗蓉 (@AstralColt) August 11, 2020
✨STARSWEPT CHARACTER CARD GIVEAWAY!!!✨
See thread below for instructions! pic.twitter.com/mLpSGqeOtT
And here are some of the entries that have come in!
If that gets me some publicity on social media, awesome! I also figure I can use them as an incentive to pick up the whole series at events once those start up again (e.g. "if you buy the whole set, you also get a free set of character cards!"). But as with any marketing venture, it's hard to say how effective it'll be. If nothing else, they're just a delight to have :-).
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