Genesis of a Cover: Tuber Dudes
When I first read Invasion of the Tuber Dudes, I was immediately inspired by the gonzo quality of the titular characters and the surreal nature of the whole story. In particular, the carrot Tuber Dudes reminded me of the closing scene from Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and I knew that the book needed a real carrot on the cover!
At the time, Ahimsa had a cover for the project that he had made (it used a Salvador Dali painting, which also fit the surreal storyline very nicely), but I thought I would pitch him my idea and see what he thought about it. I’m not sure if Ahimsa really knew what he was agreeing to when I told him that I wanted to do a real-life photo shoot of a bunch of carrots, but he accepted my offer and I got to work.
The last time I did a photo shoot for a cover (The Chaos Gods Come to Meatlandia), I sculpted everything myself, but I really wanted this one to be mostly (ahem) organic. That meant real carrots for sure, but I also initially wanted some more realistic-looking arms for the models. At first I was looking for something kind of like the Masters of the Universe toys that I used to play with as a kid. But, when I couldn’t find anything that fit my criteria after a few days of searching, I decided I would sculpt the arms and eyes myself. To fit the theme, I used an air-hardening clay made from plant fibers
Now I think that I lucked out because the funky home-made aesthetic of the arms underscores the overall weirdness of the image and the book itself.
Anyways, once the models were ready, it was a simple matter of taking some photos, compositing them together in Photoshop, and, sticking somewhat with my original idea, coming up with some cool Masters of the Universe text for the title.
