EJVG - Peripheral Visuals

I met John Major Jenkins, a researcher into Mayan cosmology, a number of years ago through Iron Feather. He has written and self published as Four Ahau Press a number of highly detailed books about the Mayan culture, sciences and calendar system. Because his work is so interesting, I have been hosting his website containing numerous documents on my server for a few years now.

2012

John has finally gotten his first major publishing deal for his new book "Mayan Cosmogenesis : 2012", about the end date of the Mayan Calender in 2012 and its relation to an alignment with the center of the universe. He asked me to do a "visionary cover artwork along the lines of my digital art" based on a crude sketch and using source material he provided. With feedback from the publisher, the piece went through three revisions...

a. first crack
2012 rev1

b. simplify
2012 rev2

c. something between a & b
2012 rev3

... but then, the publisher's prepress house decided to 'revise' the image for underexplained reasons. This is what they came up with...

... it looks good, they tracked down a stone version of the tablet image that John gave me, and they added the titling, which I was asked not to do. But I am still partial to my version, which I think is more graphically interesting, and more faithful to what John wanted. I'm curious what you the impartial viewer thinks. It doesn't really matter, I got paid well, John likes them all, and you should read the book anyway (as they say, you can't judge a book...).