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@ _manne_ I agree some more lightening is needed, I might try the bounce light, or just do some more lightening in Howler.
@KnittingMommy The pose is a little off, I'll try turning her a bit more and adjusting the hand.
@Tabor Thank you for your insights, I'm going to put things back together, re-render with all of these thoughts in mind.
If I didn't mention you by name, I still appreciate your comments.
Here is the adjusted image.
Merry Christmas everyone. Changed this to an animated gif over on DA showing the progression. It came out so nice I wanted to show it here too.
Wonderful! Merry Christmas to you!
From another art prompt. No, writing, yet, just the picture. Comments and critiques welcome. The origingal is of course bigger.
I think "All is Lost" has potential, with the single image you've defined the survival story. There's is also a compositional balance to the image, there is space for the title. A little postwork on the blood from the injuries and perhaps a reflection in the visor of the horror that awaits him, and perhaps a more injured pose and you've got something.
Thanks! I've been woorking with Filter Forge to see what i work up from there to bump up the drama.
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy New Year, Peace to your Souls, Blessed be.
Hello fellow artist, I decided to start a new venture and thats bookcover art. I'm new at this and any suggestens/remarks to help guide me in the right direction would be greatly appreicated. The art work is mine and book cover is a template I'm using to help me visualize what a title on a book might convey. Thank you for viewing and any comments!! (-:
Awesome!!!! Thanks for posting it up here! I love to be able to see it at thumbnail size as that's how it will appear in the Amazon ebook selection. I do have a couple suggestions :)
Thanks for joining us here and welcome! :)
Thank you Manne for your comments and an invitation to this site! I added a thumbnail image ..
Nice cover art, and overall effort. Well done.
There are a couple of points that I think might improve the cover:
1. It's out of balance. The art is the predominate element, and she's shifted too far to the left. (Plus, she's looking out at the left, leaving excessive negative space behind her, which accentuates the unbalance). I realize you centered the image based on the the spear, but it's her head and main body that form the focus. In general, you want a character like this to be looking into the space, not out of it. The composition is somewhat complicated because the spear adds a nice diagonal action toward the lower right, so simply flipping your character may not work, but you can experiment.
It can be okay to have off-centered art if the text elements act as counter balance, as in this book:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Princess-Diarist-Carrie-Fisher/0593077563
Here's a cover that shows the main character "looking into" the large negative space, and the text acting as counter balance for the art:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Born-Run-Bruce-Springsteen/dp/1471157792/
2. In Western culture, our eyes follow an upper-left to lower-right scan at first glance, with secondary glances UL to UR, and UL to LL. So consider these paths as the primary "heat maps" of your image. You've put the author name at the top where is commands importance, but then diminished it by making it small. I'd remove it from there, so that the model's head takes the initial focal point.
3. Try replacing the series name with a larger version of the author name, and experiment with a "burst" with the series name at the top, or if the image needs the balance, multi-line near the upper-right.
4. As Manne says, the title text is somewhat lost because of the color. I'd try making "The" green, and the main text white.
5. If you're going to be using all centered text, then everything should be centered, including "The" in the title. (Unfortuantely, in your current art that will place it right at her crotch, which is awkward. Play with placements as needed.)
Tobor,
Thank you for your input, it is greatly appreicated, after pointing out the problem areas I can see where I need to modify and balance the image and text. Back to the drawing board for me! (-:
Ok, I made some modifcations based on Manne and Tobors inputs. I repositoned the characters, render the image a lighter maybe too light lol, but i can changed that and also reposition the text. The character is now looking into space not out of it, the spear point is no longer an issue and I balanced the negitive space with the title of the book. The only thing is the title of the "authers name" color at the bottom, maybe the name will be lost in the picture with that color?
I think the colors were more vibrant in the darker version. I can barely read Authors Name in the thumbnail. I do like the change in the title and placement. I can't really read the tagline, but I'm not sure if that is as important in thumbnails as the title and author's name. I think the placement of the image looks improved, too. For book covers, you don't want to get too creative with composition. We readers like things looking more balanced on a cover. It's a nice start, though. I love more creative covers like this than what is flooding the marketplace right now.
Thank you so much for the feedback Knittingmommy! I'm going to work on the lighting some more, so hopefully next time around the colors are more vibrant as before. I'm not sure if I'm posting the thumb name correctly? also do you have more details on this "It's Raining Men Again Contest Entry Thread"
What are the requirements?
Thank you!
Ah, yeah, the deadline is December 31 at around DAZ midnight that night on New Year's Eve. To make allowances for differences in clocks' settings, I'll probably post the contest closed sign a little after midnight on New Year's Eve. All of the rules and prizes are on the first page here. Basically, any humanoid male figure should be the focus of the art, but female secondary characters are allowed, but the male has to be front and center. Try and upload an attachment with the entry to make things easier on me to pull them out for judging. Sometimes, the forums conspire against that and I'll still get it, but might take a few extra steps for me. There is still time. I'd love to see you enter. We have a lot of great prizes this year. Just PM me if you have any questions or post to the entry thread because comments and questions are welcome there. :)
Thank you Knittingmommy for the information, I just might try to enter, sounds like fun!
Every publishing site is going to have their own guidelines, but Amazon is the biggest and I don't think they are drastically different, but Amazon does have their own way of doing things that might be different from a site that sells Indie covers. This is from their Kindle Direct site:
Ideal dimensions for cover files are 2,560 x 1,600.
Important: The minimum image size allowed is 1,000 x 625 pixels. The maximum image size allowed is 10,000 x 10,000 pixels and your image must be less than 50M.
However, that is what is optimized for their Kindle Fire and you'll find that images are their website are more like a 6:9 ratio. Most of the Kindle devices work well with a 3:4 aspect ratio. Barnes and Noble are a little bit different. I would look at where you plan to try to sell the cover and use their guidelines. Personally, I've been looking at SelfPubBookCovers.com and I use their guidelines because that is where I plan to try and sell my first covers. I'm not in a rush and I'm still learning a lot of techniques. That might not be the type of place you see selling your covers. There are lots of places these days for indie cover artists. Figure out where you want your covers to be sold and then you'll be able to figure out the best sizes and dimensions for you.
The thumbnails on Amazon are about 125 x 41.6 and I'm not sure if those are a standard size or not. Hopefully, those who have lots of experience can give you a better idea about sizes. Unless there is a size cap, you are better off doing your final image resolution bigger than needed. Resolution is going to differ some, but I think most places want around 300 ppi. Amazon is a little different in that they say minimum is 72 ppi. I don't know that I would actually try doing a cover at such a low resolution.
For a finished digital image that's not going to be displayed at high rez (for instance a thumbnail or an image that will only display at 2560x1600) your eye won't pick up the difference between a 300ppi and a 72ppi image, so to save space and cost Amazon suggests the 72ppi as on some plans the author is charged a delivery cost based on file size. A minimum of 300ppi is required for any kind of print image.
Ah, that actually makes sense. I think the main reason that the site I'm going with does 300 ppi is that they want the output for both digital and print. I haven't looked that closely at what Amazon's print on demand service requires for book covers yet. I would think they require a higher ppi then. Another good reason to research and decide where you will sell your covers then and base your specs on their requirements. While I plan to try and do covers for others to get my feet wet, my goal is to do my own covers, eventually, when I finally get to the point where I'm ready to publish. When that happens, it will be straight through Amazon so I'll have to do more research with them and their requirements.
Another possibility is for retina screen devices (200+ ppi). A double-resolution image wouldn't need to be upscaled, but of course it's 4 times the pixels with the corresponding increase in file size and increased delivery costs.
There are still a lot of old books about with low res covers based on the device spect at the time, and often they don't scale very well too newer devices (just a reader's observation).
Hi all, and happy new year!
My first posting on the site--I also posted this over on the ZBrush forums, as that's what I used to do the final render of my model (I have a 9-year-old computer, and it's 32bit, so Iray doesn't even know I exist, lol. I'm getting a new system next month, and I'm making sure it's NVIDIA all the way, so hopefully I can use Iray to do my renders in the future).
I'm also an author (though nowhere near as best-selling as the OP), and started doing 3D modeling for the purpose of creating book covers.
I've been teaching myself, using youtube videos, for over a year, and the programs I use are Daz, Zbrush, Blender, Marvelous Designer, and--of course, Photoshop.
The background pic was created with/rendered in Blender
The model was created using the Genesis 3 base model, and altering her completely in Zbrush
Her clothing was made using Marvelous Designer.
I couldn't quite get the lighting to hit her just right in Blender, so I decided to put the background from Blender and the render from Zbrush of the model together in Photoshop, and play with the lighting until they looked like they belonged in the same scene.
Here is the final book cover.
Welcome! It's always nice to meet another author/artist! This is a great group, I've really gotten great input from everyone here which has helped me improve.
Great work there with ZBrush!
ty so much manne! Yes, I've lurked a lot, lol--but never had a project I could share until I finally finished this one, lol.
Now, onto the next book...but I think I'll wait for the new system before I bother. Bot Daz and Blender keep crashing randomly on my current machine :(
Wanted to let Manne and everyone else know, that with the awesome imput here, all three of my covers were accepted on the site. (thebookcoverdesigner.com). So, thank you all very much! Now that the holiday rush is slowing down, I may have some time to do a few more (I still have 3 art prompts to render)
Awesome! Congratulations!
Congratulations! Good luck! Tiffianie
Hey, _manne_, I just noticed the animated gif of your image up above. Very nice! :)
Thanks! After a couple tries, it came out just like I wanted it to. :)
Congratulations! That's awesome news. Wow, people have been busy here, I need to catch up. Loving the Tree Queen cover, omg that's gorgeous!