American Illustration 45 Winners

The Hound is a 64-page graphic novel that adapts H.P. Lovecraft’s 1922 short story of the same name. The narrative follows two Englishmen who were driven by an obsession with grave-robbing and occult artifacts. Everything went down after they stole a jade amulet from a tomb in Holland. From that moment, they were pursued by an otherworldly creature, led to their death in the end. This adaptation focuses on atmosphere and visual pacing. While I call it a “graphic novel”, the book in fact blends paneled sequences with compositional illustrations to form a more abstract expression. Most of the pages are in black and white, with selective full-color panels and spreads used to highlight moments of horror or hallucination. Layouts also incorporate typographic elements, texts are not only text but part of images, distortion and other manipulations of texts are powerful tools to show the mental states of the “narrator”. In order to achieve a believable level of historical accuracy, the book draws visual references from the 1910s–1920s period, including possible price of European shipping lines, British country houses, early church yards, Edwardian dress code, and the specific architectures in London and Holland at that time. Following a successful Kickstarter campaign in late December 2025, the project was self-published as an e-book in January 2026, with the hardcover edition released in February 2026.

The Hound is a 64-page graphic novel that adapts H.P. Lovecraft’s 1922 short story of the same name. The narrative follows two Englishmen who were driven by an obsession with grave-robbing and occult artifacts. Everything went down after they stole a jade amulet from a tomb in Holland. From that moment, they were pursued by an otherworldly creature, led to their death in the end. This adaptation focuses on atmosphere and visual pacing. While I call it a “graphic novel”, the book in fact blends paneled sequences with compositional illustrations to form a more abstract expression. Most of the pages are in black and white, with selective full-color panels and spreads used to highlight moments of horror or hallucination. Layouts also incorporate typographic elements, texts are not only text but part of images, distortion and other manipulations of texts are powerful tools to show the mental states of the “narrator”. In order to achieve a believable level of historical accuracy, the book draws visual references from the 1910s–1920s period, including possible price of European shipping lines, British country houses, early church yards, Edwardian dress code, and the specific architectures in London and Holland at that time. Following a successful Kickstarter campaign in late December 2025, the project was self-published as an e-book in January 2026, with the hardcover edition released in February 2026.