I read IT as a teenager, and it became one of the favorite books of my youth. Years later, creating the official cover was something that felt unique—it is still one of the most rewarding trophies of my career. A legacy project of this magnitude deserved more than a static retrospective; it demanded a technological resurrection.

And since I was already working on Augmented Reality books—a tool for self-published authors to stand out and create engagement—I decided to give this volume the AR treatment as well.

This Augmented Reality experience is my personal homage to the novel and to that white edition, connecting a beloved physical past with an interactive digital future.

I didn't want to use a clean digital image of the cover for the 3D textures, so I carefully photographed and worked from the physical print I own to bring back the exact feel of the original 2001 edition (yes, complete with some wrinkles and small stains).

If only we could bring the smell of those old pages into AR, right?

This specific illustration became the definitive face of Pennywise for the Spanish-speaking market, reprinted over and over for nearly two decades in all kinds of editions, until the 2017 film was released and this Pennywise was replaced. Today, this 2001 edition is a highly sought-after collector's item that achieved its own “cult status” among Spanish-reading Stephen King fans - “El IT Blanco” (The White IT)- with people asking me for high-resolution prints to use as custom dust jackets to replace the covers on their modern editions. It stands as a testament to the longevity of human-crafted editorial illustration.

The long story short of the IT "white edition": In the early 2000s, art director Jordi Lascorz at Plaza & Janés made a bold editorial decision: to use pure white backgrounds in a special collection, opposing the traditional dark covers used in the horror genre. So, how to achieve the psychological effect caused by the usual black and dark using the exact opposite palette? How could pure light feel scary? We needed to use a shocking narrative relying on deep mental connections with the viewer.

The base structure of Pennywise was originally modeled using 3D Metaballs and Metaelements, rendered and, in a streamlined collaborative pipeline with Xavier Comas, subjected to digital painting and compositing to maximize the psychological impact of this ancient evil taking the shape of a clown, emerging from the light of the cover. The eye was one of those narrative elements, while the satisfied expression of Pennywise, almost looking at the viewer as if they were about to be his next feast completed the narrative.