The Assignment
One full-page interior illustration. This is the visual threshold the reader crosses before entering the novel. It does not illustrate a scene. It establishes a state of mind.
Aesthetic: near-future cyberpunk, neo-noir, cinematic realism, clinical horror. The goal is an image that feels less like a drawing and more like a high-resolution photograph taken by a forensic drone — biological detail so extreme it starts to look alien.
The Image
An extreme macro close-up of a dead man’s eye. The entire canvas is consumed by it. Claustrophobic. Invasive. There is no context, no face, no room — only the eye, filling the frame.
The sclera: No veins. No natural moisture. The dull, brushed-metal sheen of wet aluminium. It looks manufactured rather than grown.
The iris: Flat, reflective silver. Not organic fibres — sharp, microscopic geometric pathways, like a high-density circuit board pressed into glass. Perfectly, terrifyingly precise.
The pupil: An absolute, light-consuming black hole at the centre of the silver circuitry. Nothing comes back out.
The Reflection
The convex surface of the metallic eye acts as a warped dark mirror. In the faint reflection, barely readable, two figures stand in the dark of a server room:
Behind them, the ghostly blue and amber status lights of towering server racks bleed into the curvature of the eye. The reflection is small. The reader has to lean in to find it. That is intentional.
The Text Overlay
Suspended in the foreground — like an AR glitch projecting directly onto the lens — a single line of text:
I SEE YOU, AMARA.
Font: 7-segment digital alarm clock typeface. Jagged. Domestic-retro. The jarring contrast between that font and the hyper-advanced biometric horror beneath it is where the psychological weight lives.
Colour: arterial red. It is the only warmth in the entire image. It glows with active, malicious energy against the dead cold of everything else.
Colour Palette
Tone Reference
Blade Runner 2049. The cover art of high-end modern sci-fi graphic novels. Photorealistic, not painterly. Cold light, not dramatic light. The image should make the reader feel observed before they have read a single word of the novel.
The red text is the only thing in the image that is alive. Everything else is evidence.
To discuss this brief: submissions@astoundingtales.ca