Designing Terry Pratchett’s Discworld – Paul Kidby
A name well known to fans of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series having been Sir Terry’s “artist of choice” to visualise his works for many years, artist Paul Kidby collaborated with the author on Discworld projects from 1993 before taking over as designer of the book jackets in 2002 following the passing of the previous cover artist Josh Kirby.
Kidby’s renditions of the beloved characters of Ankh-Morpork and beyond becoming as much a part of the readers visualisation as Pratchett’s own descriptions, Sir Terry once commented that Kidby’s art was “The closest anyone’s got to how I see the characters,” and now some of the process and history of the creation of those visions is shared in Designing Terry Pratchett’s Discworld.
In this beautiful artbook Kidby tells us about his journey from a young boy fascinated with dinosaurs and dogs to a teen trying to emulate the style of Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam before moving onto his time illustrating for video game packaging and magazines such as Games Master and PC Gamer, his eventual collaboration with Pratchett manifested first by sending art to Sir Terry repeatedly before finally approaching him at a signing event with an example of his work.
Pages are dedicated to the many and varied famous characters of the Discworld, with sections dedicated to groups such as the witches, the wizards, the watch, and dragons, both noble and the lovable swamp variety such as Errol, and many of the individual characters that make up that rich world.
Recalling the process to get the right images for the world and characters, Sam Vimes’ original Clint Eastwood aspect shifted after Sir Terry told him it was Pete Postlethwaite he had envisaged, the final look channelling a bit of both actors, and Kidby’s illustrations often draw on iconic images, the Apollo 11 astronauts becoming Carrot, Rincewind and Leonard of Quirm in The Last Hero and Bobby Moore on the shoulders of the 1966 England team an obvious pointer for the Unseen Academicals who discovered the joy of of “foot the ball.”
Inheriting cover duties with a book now so highly regarded that it is soon to be reprinted as a prestigious Penguin Classic, Kidby appropriately reimagined Rembrandt’s The Night’s Watch for the characters of the Night Watch, and although a stark change to Josh Kirby’s style it was received well by the legions of fans, Kidby paying tribute by placing his predecessor in the crowd in the spot occupied by Rembrandt himself in the original, while in another piece Vermeer’s delicate Girl with a Pearl Earring transmogrified into a troll with a skull earring.
A “member of the Order of the Honeybee,” the small group of close friends and family personally entrusted by Sir Terry before his passing to keep his legacy alive and true to his vision, as part of that quest Kidby wrote the Discworld Imaginarium in 2017 and in 2023 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the series he worked with Royal Mail to produce a set of stamps that Moist von Lipwig would be proud of.
Designing Terry Pratchett’s Discworld a celebration of the many years Pratchett and Kidby worked together, it presents the beautiful fruit grown by the long-term collaboration between writer and artist, telling the stories behind the images from preliminary sketches to finished paintings, every one of which would be a great addition to any gallery wall.
Designing Terry Pratchett’s Discworld is available now from Doubleday
More of Paul Kidby’s work can be found here
