In the past three years Marc McBride has illustrated over 50 book covers and countless magazines, as well as producing artwork for advertising campaigns. He has a solid design background in both advertising and film, winning the West Australian Film and Television Award for Best Art Director. Marc has had work exhibited with the New York Society of Illustrators. Marc's influences for all his work range from tacky B-movies about giant ants from outer space through to the pop artists of the sixties such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, and other illustrators like H R Giger, who created the alien and the set design for the movie Alien. Marc's soaring imagination is never more evident than in the mind-blowing fantasy jacket art he has created for Deltora Quest.

The medium I used for the series was acrylic paint and inks. Using an airbrush and paint brushes I created the series in quite a traditional way—that is, not digital. I feel this more organic painting works for me in the creation of people, monsters etc. If I had been asked to create space ships or futuristic cities perhaps I would have used a computer. Each cover took between three and five days to complete, but, like all illustrators, I always feel I would have liked to spend more time on each painting. Practical reasons, such as deadlines, other jobs, eating and sleeping, make this impossible. Nature has pattern in even the strangest of creatures and I wanted to have this in the Deltora Quest monsters, to give them some sense of reality.