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As a thumbnail, I can read the text and author name perfectly! Nice! The figures make a nice silhouette against the flame and the title and author pop.
I do have question that popped in my head when I viewed the the full size image. With the title Athena in Ashes - I think of Athena the goddess, of course. The wording makes me think of not so much a person, but something feminine - perhaps a city like Athens for example. So when I view the full size image and see the central character is male (although because of the darkness somewhat androgynous) and someone who looks feminine but without detail behind him, I was like huh? The entire feel of the cover is very masculine with the dark shadows and flame - while the title is an aspect of the feminine.
I just thought I'd mention it because I don't know if the contradiction is intentional or if it was something that was considered at all. I thought perhaps you might want to play up that aspect or tone it down? That's something so subjective it's not funny. But one never knows what sort of thematic elements the author and artist want to touch on, so I toss it in your direction. Kick it around like a soccer ball - just don't hit me in the head, thank you! lol!
Great job!
Hows the one cover with the angel coming? I really like it. Or did I miss something while I was trapped in the stone age with no internet access? lol!
Cheers,
Kath
I like this thicker font much better and the whole cover has a good near future mythic feel to it.
Kath brings up a real good point about thematic and concept consistency in a book cover. It's the whole "a picture is worth a thousand words", you want the cover along with the synopsis to solidify the idea of the story in the potential customer's mind. So it is definitely something you would want to think about. The words used in the title itself, the cover art, and the synopsis/page blurb should all gell to convince the reader that's something they want to spend money on. It's important to pay attention to contradictions like this, because the decision to buy something actually happens within the first few seconds, and it happens all at a subconsious level. That does not mean you can not have contradictions, but if you do them, there should be a reason you know why you're doing them. Without knowing the story or the protagonist, it's tough to say.
Jupiter Ascending has a complex title that is kind of aloof and cosmic, and until we understand that the story is about a female protagonist named Jupiter who cleans toilets but is heir to the universe, on its own the title makes little sense beyond the obvious scifi element.
That's easier to read on the thumbnail. Still these parts where the yellow flames are the background, they are a bit hard to read. Perhaps add a little bit of black smoke there?
Of course this ends up getting more complicated than I originally thought it would be. Don't laugh because I know this is awful but there really is a point here.
Before I start typing up this long involved novel, I was hoping folks might comment on techniques they think I might be using on this image - I'm hoping to learn first impressions. It's kinda hard to explain without giving it away. lol! But I don't want to say too much and color anyone's perception. I'm looking to see what jumps out at you guys not so much with composition for example, or the fact I don't have a background (I'll work on that later). But what I did to create the style, look, or whatever you want to call it. If I totally confused everyone - sorry but hopefully some folks can jump in with some feedback on that. Thanks!
His hair is a bit like a lion's mane. Which would be a hindrance in a fight, I think. There was a reason why the warriors of former times braided their hair. But if you go just for looks, he's fine.
I would try to make his right eye a bit more visible, as eyes are the strongest feature in a face.
Ooooooh mystery....
There are a couple of things that jump out at me: You've gone a more stylized route with his skin (almost a noir look on the face, although the chest area looks painted), hair, and the bands (more brushed/painted) across his chest, and then a more realistic look for the peacock feathers on the shoulders. Also, the skin is fairly desaturated (at least that's how it appears on my monitor) while the bands and the cape contain more intense colouring.
I have to agree with Cherpenbeck about the hair, it appears quite a bit thicker than what you usually find in real life.
As far as a style or look goes I don't think this has quite gelled yet, because the elements aren't cohesive enough to make it identifiable as a style. Perhaps if you ran it through some photoshop filters just to look at the results something might click because they would in many ways "normalize" the image and apply the same "look" to all the elements. I'm not suggesting that you end there, but just start by taking a look at a bunch of different styles so you can see what kind of look really harmonizes all your elements.
HA, you're right you didn't have to type a novel, I typed one in instead. :)
lol! Thanks Cherp and Manne - this is just a really quick post, I want to respond to your posts in detail a bit later but I had to post this YouTube link on using DAZ to create book covers - from last year. Right now I'm really limited on my internet connection and how much data - watching YouTube and streaming chew it up fast. So I haven't watched this yet, but I thought maybe' y'all might want to check it out.
https://youtu.be/SOrJU_o_HpI
Thanks! I did take a quick look at it, but I don't have any sound at the computer I'm at right now so, I'll have to listen too a bit later.
The body and face have a good painterly look, but IMO the hair doesn't match the rest of the style. Not talking about the haircut, but the artistic approach to it. The peacock feathers could also be toned down in texture -- they were the first thing I noticed. And kept noticing each time I looked at the image. But maybe that was your intention.
The skin doesn't have the tell-tale "Photoshop filter" look, so if that's your aim, it's a good start. The hair definitely looks Photoshopped in, even if it isn't.
Thanks so much everyone!
Okay, I'm sorry to confuse y'all but like I said, I did have a point with this. First let me show you this.
This is the rendered image straight out of DAZ (thank goodness for photobucket - lol!)
hahaha! It's Yul Brenner!
But the thing is - this is the image I started with in Photoshop.
I know I just confused everyone. lol! You see in recent months I've been trying to improve my skills at painting skin and hair in Photoshop. I started off reading lots of tutorials of course. I found a nice tutorial that had not only specific instructions but a large set of free brushes and even the color swatches for this. It looked very interesting and the artist creating the tut was very, very good. Extremely realistic skin. It all came in a zip file which I downloaded.
Before I could jump into it, I got slammed with real life - and completely forgot about it. I downloaded that tut over 8 months ago - maybe longer! lol! I just stumbled over it the other day. Well, I've learned a lot about painting realistic skin between then and now, but I am also a firm believer in learning everything and anything I can. Jumping into tutorials like this no matter if beginner or advanced, help keep me out of ruts and expose me to different techniques. A technique might not work for me, but everything that I can put in my artist's toolbox for the future is a benefit.
While hair is part of that tut the big reason why he doesn't have any is because I busted my buns learning how to hand paint hair and I've been working so much with DAZ, I realized I hadn't painted any in some time. Well, I'd better practice a bit before I get too rusty plus, I have my own set of customized brushes that I'm fine tuning that hopefully others might enjoy as well. So that was the reason for the hair.
But the skin tutorial is what I was concentrating on, I wanted to try the techniques, brushes, and the swatches to bring myself out of my comfort zone - a la Manne, hehehe. Plus since my skills in that department have improved I wanted to look at the quality of the techniques themselves as well as the quality of the tutorial.
If you've never written a tutorial - I encourage EVERYONE to at least try it - even if it never sees the light of day. It can be more challenging than most expect. I know since I've started writing and creating video tutorials, I appreciate those who do write easy to follow tutorials all the more - especially if English isn't their native language.
So what you are seeing in the first image I posted, is hair that I did only to keep practicing - yes, it looks attrocious so I'll KEEP PRACTICING! lol! Thank you! But the big thing I wanted to get thoughts from y'all was the skin and feathers.
The skin is 100% hand painted in photoshop starting with the black and white image. I was going for as much realism as I could possibly muster which is why I needed first impressions without giving too much away and influencing anyone. So thank you, thank you, thank you. Painting the skin - I had so many darn layers going the file was over 2 gigs! It got to the point where Photoshop refused to save it because it was so huge. lol!
I started off with the b&w because of the tutorial - then I added a 50% gray layer from there was using soft round blender at low opacity using black and white to block in the highlights and shadows with soft light and overlay blending modes. I usually use screen and multiply and the black and white come in last as more of a non-destructive burn and dodge to add that last little bit of pop to an image.
I started off pretty well, but I guess I've been painting gaming minis for too many years because I automatically started using those techniques when the tutorial took the painting in a direction I wasn't happy with. I think it was my lack of understanding of the instructions as I have a feeling English isn't this person's native language. Overall, the tut was written very well just a few sticking points for me. But it was funny how the mini painting techniques where my In Case of Emergency Break Glass. lol! The really interesting thing - the photoshop work looks a lot better than the skin tones I got painting - and the minis I painted weren't bad when they came to flesh tones. hehe!
So yes, I'm probably nuts because like I said this took me far more time than I thought it would - I wanted just a basic experiment but no - I gotta get in over my head as usual.
Well, I'm definitely going to keep practicing (and frantically doggie-paddle since I can't seem to leave well enough alone. lol!)
Oh and hi Tobor! How ya doing m'dear? The feathers - let preface this. I was looking for PS brushes but most of the stuff I found when dynamic wasn't your classic "peacock feather". The true peacock feathers were nothing more than solid stencil brushes that came across as one color with very little variation. I wanted a brush that was more dynamic but with the stencil shape.
So I found some nice peacock feather references and went to town with Photoshops Color Range selector.
I used the color range selector to break up a single feather into various colors - blue, green and cyan. So the brushes are stencils but they aren't the same part of the feather.
Now I've got three different brushes that were created selecting the main colors of the feather. But because I selected the blue color to create a certain brush doesn't mean that it always has to paint blue. I then took the three brushes and experimented with their colors, mulitple layers, and of course, multiple blending modes.
I've got a few more paces I want to run them through but then I was going to see if anyone else wanted to play with them and see if we could paint the town - uh - blue, green, cyan, yellow - and any other color we might want. lol!
It'll look right when the hair and feathers match the painted look of the body. The hair especially looks pasted on, as it has too much detail for the body style. And with the fine detail in the feathers, it becomes the point of interest. Assuming both of these are in their own layers, a simpler painterly filter or action on just those layers may be all you need. Hair, especially, does not need a lot of detail in this type of painting. For example, look at most any painting by Caravaggio, arguably one of the best artists of the Boroque, and noted for his realism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravaggio
What you see is tone, to give shape and body to the hair, with only a hint of actual strandy texture.
Ah I see. That makes WAAAAAYYYY more sense. I do have a question regarding that though, would it be better to use the Daz Cartoon render settings when trying to get an image suitable for painting? Because then it might possibly show the color transitions in a more effective gradiant base without the artifacting that noise generated by a regular render. Just a thought.
Uhgggggg tutorials. I completely agree!
The some of the painting tutorials I've seen, have the skin texture painted first and then one of the last steps is to apply noise to "texture" the skin.
I realize that they had you with black and white because of the tutorial but I would argue against the use of black and white for anything other than line art because as, you already know,black occurs so infrequently in nature. I would think that would work at cross purposes to your realistic skin. No? Maybe even colorizing that black and white layer to soften the shadows?
Hahahahahah well summer's a fine time for a swim. Very nice of you to share WIP.
Hey guys - back again for a quick post. My data is almost all gone and I'm trying to work with Verizon to get something better but they're being boneheaded about it. grrrrr! So just wanted to let you know if I run out of data before we get that worked out, I might disappeared for a little bit. Hopefully, this will get resolved this afternoon and I'll be back. But until then, I'll be in the stone age beating them with my club. UG! THUNK!
Hello! LOVE this thread, just found it today.
I too am wannabe published author - I have a manuscript ready and have been thinking about submitted to small, independent publishers. I have been to some book fairs where I met Bonnie Hearn Hill and Christopher Allen Poe (yes, he's related, and yes he writes paranormal fiction). Based on their advice, I rewrote the first half of my book - it needed WAY more bite.
I have been an artist for a long time, but ran into a block... or rather a car accident (6 actually). This messed up my neck so I can't look down for any length of time without pain, and can't spend time on my watercolor anymore. So for a head neutral position, I sought out 3D art. It has been a long time coming for me, because I have a 7-year old computer that really couldn't handle Daz Studio. It has finally died, rest its soul, so with an external hard drive in hand and backed up copies of all my writing, I mourned my old PC and without shame am excitedly going to buy a new one with LOTS of power. I'm borrowing my husband's computer at the moment.
Needless to say, this thread is exactly what I have been looking for. I have been pretty successful in creating custom characters, mostly with Genesis. I wanted to show some examples of my work. Now, remember, my old PC would crash if I added to much to a scene, so these are done with only the default lighting, no camera, resolution not too high, and hardly anything. What I wanted to highlight was the character customization.
Pic 1 is titled "Princess of the Night"
Pic 2 is the same character with different hair and a picture background.
Pic 3 is my main character, Rhyeer-Sharr.
Pic 4 is the same character at 10 years old. I did this with Growing up for Genesis - a great utility.
Can't wait to get my new PC and really do something with these characters.
Err, did it wrong.
Upload pix again.
Hi Dracorn!
Sorry to hear about your accident. Switching to 3D from water color must have been kind of hard. But wellcome in this cover addicts thread ...
You seem to prefer a purple color. But for a book cover, I think the second picture (more blue, less purple) would work best.
Maybe your new computer will give you the opportunity to really produce the pictures which are in your imagination.
Hi Dracorn, nice to see you here. I love this thread as well!
A new machine will definitely help. Using good tools make the process soooooooo much faster. I notice in pic 1 your gal has horns or a headress but not in pic2 was that intentional?
Sorry, been busy.
cherpenbeck: Purple is a coincidence - it just happens to be what these particular pix have. But I definitely see your point about the blue highlight around her head in Pic 2. It does catch the eye from a distance.
_manne_: The lack of horns in the second picture is just because I'm messing around. D/S doesn't have exactly what I'm looking for, so I either have to experiment, or model my own. Once I get my new computer, my ambitious plans are to use some modeling, retexturing and post work to create my own style. It will be a lot of work. My artwork is my best advertisement, and I plan to use it to gain people's attention.
On that thought, I have been kicking around the idea of creating a graphic novel style layout of chapter 1 - a VERY ambitious project. It would require learning Bryce for some backgrounds (castles and wizard's towers), definitely my own modeling for custom items including a monster, etc. Needless to say, it would be something to do after I am published (remember, still a wannabe here). I want to create a collection of artwork and perhaps and anticipation of my eventual published work. My idea is to give the graphic novel away free, along with wallpaper and other items that create an advertisement for my book.
The more people get hooked on my artwork, the more curious they will be to check out the book - that's what I'm hoping for.
Your feedback is appreciated.
Uhgggg I hear you, been super busy this week too!
Have you checked out some of the existing models and scenes available here at Daz or at other sites? There are a lot of talented modelers creating content. It may be that you find out you don't need to learn Bryce if you can use Daz Studio to accomplish your scene work. This would save you time in learning a new software.
I think Kathryn would have to give you feedback on the efficacy of your book plan. Hopefully she can make it back from the dark ages and weigh in.
Ok general question here. We've discussed print vs. digital display of artwork previously and I am just trying to wrap my head around the concept. How much lighter should a version of the artwork be for print vs what can be seen on the computer? I have an image I want to be fairly dark when printed but I don't want the details to wash out. Any suggestions on how much lighter? Do I need to post an example?
Export the picture with cmyk colors. You will see somehow washed-out looking colors. Try the same with using the color profile of the printing house, The colors should look somehow more normal. Then you need to adjust the gamma to make the picture a little bit brighter - between 3% and 10%, depending on how dark your picture is overall. That does the trick, most of the time.
But ... you can easily over-regulate. Having a test printing is always advisable.
It depends on how the printing is done. If it's print-on-demand, those are done with high speed color printers that commonly use RGB as input (just like most any digital printer, regardless of the inks). If they are printing it offset, they may want (but check with them) a file for color separation, CMYK. Switching between RGB and CMYK color mode almost always loses color fidelity, because the same colors cannot be reproduced in each. So start your project with the correct color mode. This is why Photoshop asks you this up-front.
Photoshop provides a way to proof the colors. See View->Proof Setup, and View-Proof Colors. Colors that are out of gamut (cannot be directly reproduced) are shown. Those colors may shift from what you see on the screen.
Note that there are document pofiles, and printing profiles. Don't mix the two, or you'll get wacky results. A document profile, like sRGB, is applied to the document, and tags it for color management by Photoshop or other rendering software. Avoid sending untagged (unprofiled) documents to a printer. They have no way of knowing how the colors are to be expressed. You can check the current profile in the Photoshop status bar: Select Document Profile in the pulldown list. sRGB is by far the most common, and it closely parallels the color space of video monitors. You should apply a profile if there isn't one. Some colors may shift; you'll need to correct for it, as necessary.
Printer profiles are used for printing, and tailor the printer to its inks or toners. Example, a professional-level "CMYK" inkjet may actually contain 10 colors, for a wider gamut. It uses its own profile to get the extra color accuracy of these additional colors (usually several shades of black, light versions of magenta and cyan, and maybe some intermediate colors, like red, blue, or orange). Don't load a printer profile as a document profile, or vice versa.
Color management isn't all that complicated if you follow a consistent workflow. There are some good YouTube videos on developing a workflow that will help guarantee success. A printed proof is always nice, but sometimes the budget doesn't call for it. Sometimes you just have to take your chances.If it's POD, you are often able to submit changes afterward, though it usually costs extra.
Good grief I've been MIA. A big THANKS to Tober and Cherpenbeck both. So I have been getting art ready for a local ComiCon. Yay!!!! So excited about it. I just got some of the artwork back and it looks FABULOUS! Thank you both again so much for your input. Also so happy with this thread in general for pointing out little gotchas like resolution differences needed between what's released for digital copy and what goes for printing in the real world. It's made a huge difference.
I worried I was only making things more confusing!
I did want to reiterate that it's a good idea to determine how the cover is going to be printed before you begin, rather than do the art, then find a printer for it. These days, it's not a given if the color mode should be CMYK or RGB. Some offset printers want RGB, even if they are doing traditional (CMYK) color separations. It has to do with whatever printing processor they are using, and this new fangled digital age we live in. And some POD printers, like Lightning Source, can still accept either one (depending on the level of PDF you supply), but it might impact what system they will print your cover on. I think their later equipment wants RGB color mode.
I keep all my art elements in RGB, tagged with Adobe 1998 RGB or sRGB color profile. The former is a "wide gamut" profile that more readily maps its colors to sRGB, which has a narrower gamut, or even CMYK. Daz Studio outputs sRGB files when rendering in Iray, so for most documents, there's no profile conversion needed if I'm supplying a file tagged as sRGB. When it comes time to do the composite, I set the color mode when I start a new project file in Photoshop. I have Photoshop set to warn me whenever I import art that doesn't match the working profile. It serves as a reminder I may need to adjust things.
Ok Guys here's another test. Let me know readablity. I'm trying out some lighter colors after the various warnings about too much dark on the prints. I've had to actually narrow it up a bit for it to allow posting here in the forum. Question on the positioning of characters on the cover though, and this goes back to something we touched on earlier: which way should the characters be facing toward the opening of the book? Toward the spine? Does it matter?
Very nice work.
In Western culture, we hold a book with the left hand and turn the pages with the right. So, character facing the right (well, when possible and practical). There's also age-old rules -- which are meant to be broken -- about our eye gaze going from left-to-right, and top-to-bottom. Again, though, this is culturally biased. The nuance of your compositon suggests the character is looking to his (possibly uncertain) future.
In Japan and some other cultures, it's opposite. Books open from the "back."
I've never been a fan of 3D-ish Photoshop styles for book text, unless it's the main title. and used very lightly. At thumbnail size, the author's name is not readible. Which is okay, unless I'm the author! If this is a self-published or small press book, authors trade on their name by cultivating a ollowing. Random House may make the text size smaller of a non-blockbuster author, but small press/idie needs to ride on author relationships with their readers. So I'd make good ol' Leon's name a little bigger.
What's the little diagonal piece in the upper left? It's a little distracting since it doesn't look like anything tangible. I thought maybe you'd put a press logo there, but it doesn't seem quite big enough for that.
Direction is okay. The little corner looks somehow out-of place, yes, and I would change something with the yellow glow behind the title. Either change the color, or add the same color somewhere else, as I tried to show in my (very crude) make-over.