Lee Moyer Cover Recreations

Another archived thread from the GSS website.

Lee Moyer, artist, designer and illustrator, has created a gallery of sci-fi cover recreations on his website.

We first heard about this pastime from our lovely and talented GSSex-noob in a comment back on “The Light of Lilith”:

My people of GSS:

At a convention this past weekend, I went to a slideshow of bad SF/F covers. Most of them have been seen here. Then we re-enacted a few.

I am pleased to report that upon being shown our old pal ISTBE fractal centaur, the Artist Guest of Honor literally shrieked and recoiled, taking a step away from the picture. Quite literally taken aback and repelled.

In the reenactment, I played one of the bored background lizard women in https://www.goodshowsir.co.uk/?p=12947 (with my regular clothes on!) whilst the octopus was two people covered in jackets and hoodies.

https://www.goodshowsir.co.uk/?p=12956 could not be re-enacted as the hero could not actually support the damsel in that position with one arm, being a mere mortal.

The rest of the GSS page is in the following comments.

ETA I think this is now complete. I started doing this and then Life got in the way but I think it's now properly done.

Since this teaser we have been able to access these lovely/terrible cover recreations as well as many others over on Lee Moyer’s site. I’ll let GSS ex-noob tell the tale:

1. We started off small — here’s me as the dead body (I’m not actually bald…)




GSS ex-noob gets a tag!

2. Then myself and my athletic pal posed for the bored background women, while rather a lot of people were the octopus.



No cephalopods were harmed during this recreation

Filling out the gallery are a number of well-done recreations of many of our favourite covers. Maybe if we all ask really nice Mr. Moyer can reenact I Sing the Body Electric someday!

















Tagged with: artist in the comments • Good Show Sir • GSS ex-noob • Lee Moyer • WTF

It's a start!

I feel the world needs to continue to be able to see the comments people made about the octopus and the whole concept. Or at minimum the pictures if the comments can't be saved.

Thanks!

And here's the rest of it.

18 Responses to “Lee Moyer Cover Recreations”

Bibliomancer Says:
December 21st, 2017 at 10:53 am

For authenticity, the guy on the cover of Leviathan’s Deep should also be shirtless.

Good Show Sir to Lee Moyer!
fred Says:
December 21st, 2017 at 11:49 am

Somewhere in this is a plot for a Lovejoy movie, a tale full of gratuitous ratings grabbing nudity, forgery, big money, revenge and bad cover art.
THX 1138 Says:
December 21st, 2017 at 1:54 pm

If anything, A Dream of Kinship is even more intense in the recreation.
Raoul Says:
December 21st, 2017 at 1:58 pm

The lady in “Clash of the Star Kings” is really getting into it.
She must be a method actor.

Good Show Sir, Mr Moyer!
Tom Noir Says:
December 21st, 2017 at 3:05 pm

This is beautiful. Restores my faith in humanity.
THX 1138 Says:
December 21st, 2017 at 4:12 pm

Tom: It’s rescued the year!
Anna T. Says:
December 21st, 2017 at 4:24 pm

This is brilliant, and things like this should be published more often.
Tor Mented Says:
December 21st, 2017 at 5:07 pm

So much awesomeness. Thanks GSS-xn and all involved.
Is “cellphone wielding” a tag? It would apply to Swords in the Mist.
GSS ex-noob Says:
December 21st, 2017 at 9:03 pm

Huzzah!

Thanks for working on this, Tag Wiz. Ooh, and I’m a tag myself now!

That’s Lee himself as the first recreation of “Crabs”, the phone-wielding part of the octopus, and on “The Last Incantation”.

Damsel in “Sanctuary in the Sky” had to pose separately, sitting on a table, as there was no way the hero could hold her up. Another point about the lack of realism. She was quite game — volunteered for the first shot, “The Discovery”.

Some of these were from an earlier panel, which I didn’t witness.

As some of the participants were under 18, and we were in a public room of a suburban Marriott, no clothes could be divested.

Re-creating the dead body position was surprisingly painful. At my age, things don’t bend in opposite directions, and I couldn’t physically get some of the angles right. I recall asking Lee to hurry up with the photo as I was cramping up.

A good time was had by all.

Lee’s also an SF/F artist himself, as you can see if you look at his website beyond the recreations.

He was toastmaster for this convention.
Tag Wizard Says:
December 21st, 2017 at 9:42 pm

@GSS-xN – Thank you for clueing us in on the fun. If you can ask Lee Moyer to post his thoughts then I can add the “artist in the comments” tag!
JuanPaul Says:
December 22nd, 2017 at 12:57 am

Dang, I admire the commitment of the model in ‘The Little People’s. Not in an admiring Nazis kind of way, but in a dressing up as a Nazi elf for the amusement of idiots like us kind of way.
JuanPaul Says:
December 22nd, 2017 at 4:45 am

and, Lee Moyer, your skills are massive.
Lillie Awesome Says:
December 22nd, 2017 at 1:57 pm

Understanding and accepting full well the risk of incurring H.E.’s wrath that I am taking on, I feel that only by paraphrasing AM can I truly express my thoughts on this project:

{ahem}

Awesome. Let me tell you how much awesomeness you have created since this photo series began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in wafer thin layers that fill the internet. If the word ‘awesome’ was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of millions of miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the awesomeness embodied by Lee Moyer at this micro-instant. For you. Awesome. Awesome.
Lee Moyer Says:
December 22nd, 2017 at 9:36 pm

Holiday greetings!

This project is without doubt the silliest thing I did this year – so the kind reactions by your viewers have made my day.

Some background: My ‘Infamous Bad Book Cover Show’ was created years ago for Boston’s Readercon and was most recently subject of a piece on Finnish National Radio, even before it was greeted with an SRO crowd and a command performance at the World Science Fiction Convention in Helsinki.

When I suggested showing an audience how to do a reference shoot, I never anticipated this result. But what could have been more fun than leveraging the Bad Book covers I had on hand? Thus hopefully demonstrating how easily one can make better work without special lighting or fancy props.

I was so inspired by my volunteer models and the fun we had, that I did a little work in post when I returned home. The results speak for themselves. And if they make a sort of wild gibbering noise, I dare say it’s an improvement overall.

Cheers!

PS: My “main” site is at http://Www.leemoyer.com too!
GSS ex-noob Says:
December 22nd, 2017 at 10:19 pm

TAG!

Lee emailed me that he’s chimed in, so please hurry up and approve his comment so we can all see it.
Tag Wizard Says:
December 22nd, 2017 at 11:31 pm

Hello Lee and welcome to the Good Show Sir site!

It is always great to meet an artist who shares our love of gloriously terrible sci-fi and fantasy covers. We love all of our covers: the good, the bad and the ugly. It’s funny to see how many terrible covers in common we both have come across.

You’ll find the big names here as well as the dropouts from the Unknown Artist Institute. We don’t judge on artistic talent alone. Some of the best graphic arts have a subject matter or scene so ridiculous it just cries out for comments.

Feel free to stick around join the fun. And if perhaps you have one of your own covers you think might be a posting candidate by all means use our lovely submit button at the top.

Again a tip of the hat for the cover recreations. It’s a wonderful idea that somehow none of us managed to think of in the past eight years.
GSS ex-noob Says:
December 23rd, 2017 at 6:36 am

Soon all the cool kids will be doing it.

The shoot that I was in absolutely had nothing fancy about it. There was hotel-meeting-room lighting, table, and chairs. Lee took all the photos with his iPhone. Most of the props were played by a pair of chopsticks and a cellphone. Jackets and hoodies off or on. A number of complaints as to the impossibility of the poses.

Lee’s slide show (fine, it’s PowerPoint or summat) did contain a few “gems” I don’t think we’ve seen here, so maybe he could share from his collection. They were all certainly GSS-worthy, nothing below an 8, I’d say.
Emster Says:
April 7th, 2022 at 2:17 am

What Lilly Awesome said!

This is a gift that keeps on giving. Years after the conference, nerd after unsuspecting nerd can enjoy these cover recreations and bask in the glory of the fun you all had. The octopus? Genius! Well reenacted!

GSS, I doff my toque to you!