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224 S 200 W, Suite #250
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
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© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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"If you do this, and use a marketplace site like TBCD, definitely spend quality time developing your own users. If you do romance covers, get involved in some forums and groups about romance novels (they don't have to be writer groups). Same with sci-fi, mystery, children's, whatever. While it's true that you may end up bringing customers to the site that you'll then lose to another artist. But that's part of the game. Write really good blurbs about your covers, and even suggest some story lines that could go well with it."
I am actually an advanced reader for several authors as well as fairly active on some of their pages, so I am hoping that will help. I read a lot and always leave a review (even when I'm not doing an advanced read).
Exactly what Tabor said, you want to interact with the authors to build your own client base. One of my authors bought a premade from me for the 3rd book in his series. Now he has hired me to redo book 2 and to make book 4 and I will finish out the series with him. I have no idea how many books there will be.
I do a lot of 3d but also do photos.
Here is a 3D character that got accepted, it made the facebook page, the front page of the website and was posted on twitter. (One of my dragons is actually up on the front page now)
Here is one that got rejected, actually she doesn't really reject them so much as doesn't accept them and they are forever floating in "Pending" status. lol
I've been away for a long time due to computer troubles. It seems to be working for the moment, though I don't anticipate that lasting, so I've been playing around while I can.
(Image removed for nudity)
Did you post this in your deviant art gallery? I'd love to take a look.
Okay I've done the changes suggested....I think I am going to bite the bullet and submit it just for the heck of it. Ugh and I forgot to take out the Your in the title lol. Will fix that before submitting.
Cool. Good changes, From what I've read on the selfpubbookcover pages, you'll be able to leave the title fonts off, it's one of the functions they provide, the end users can try out different positions, size, colors, and types of font against the art work to personalize. Let us know how it goes. There was a blurb on facebook that one of the artist on that site just sold their 650th book cover.
Thanks! and Wow! That's a lot of book covers! God knows I have enough ideas lol.
I've downloaded their template and their fonts and directions. I will give them a try with the next one I do, I am going to submit to the other one with this one since its already done to the right size. But yes, I will let everyone know how it goes.
Oh dear! I didn't think this would fall foul of nudity being a monster with no 'bits'. I haven't posted the cover version yet but I'll try and post it there a bit later.
There's some unconvincing render work floating around on Amazon covers, from people who either don't understand lighting, don't understand posing, or don't understand postwork well enough to compensate for the other two. I think it's led to a certain amount of prejudice against covers with rendered art. The people who post in this thread are good at what they do, and don't deserve to be tarred with the same brush, but them's the breaks: you have to be good enough at Daz/Poser art to where it doesn't look rendered, and unless you're on selfpubbookcovers you have to be good at typography, which not everyone is.
Its interesting, we all try so hard to make our renders look real, and then we turn around and try and make them less real for certain things lol. I don't know how good I'll do but I'm willing to put the work in, and I'm willing to learn, and that's all I can really do. Looking at a lot of the book covers I've seen, I kind of think I will do okay but who knows. I will stick with what I want to render anyway, and we will see what happens.
.The one unfortunate thing with approaching 3D "real" is for some people, it triggers the Uncanny Valley. Generally, since we all stare at 3D every single day we acquired some immunity to the uncanny effect, but for others, specifically customers on these book selling sites, it might cause them just not to buy those types of images. And if its not selling, it's not selling. Every marketplace is unique, and we have to pay attention to what the gatekeepers are saying, because they're in that market and seeing the sales stats every single day. I think what Astradia said here is worth thinking about regarding more artistic painterly effects.
The other thing I've noticed while perusing the two sites mention, SelfPub seems to really focus on the two stock photo approach with some photoshop manipulation thrown in, whereas CoverDesign seems to use alot of setup scenes using real models which is close to our method of creation and the higher prices reflect that. just an observation.
Both good observations. I've not had a chance to actually put anything up on either site, I've been a bit distracted, but I've been thinking about it and it seems to me that for sci fi @ fantasy book covers, less real is probably the way to go (seems to me that 3Delight would be a good render engine for this, although my 3
Delight skills are very very rusty lol). I think romance covers could go either way, as could mystery covers. Horror, well, I think that's in a class all its own lol.
Here's one I did that started out as 3D rendered in iray but I did a less real finish on it in photoshop.
Ya, that's not blatantly 3d at all. Nice and elegant though.
I found a thread for book covers, awesome!!!!
~Gets comfy~
I'm a professional cover designer and my genres at the moment are mainly contemporary LGBT romance. I've designed more than 200 covers over the last 5 years or so. I have very little 3D design experience. I've rendered like 3 things ever. But since most of my work is with gay romance and there are very few stock photo resources out there (and the genre is too niche to economically support custom photo shoots), my big selling feature is interactive photomanipulation. It can get really difficult piecing two characters togethers with like 10 different photos, and I'm always always always looking for more resources, and last week I was like, "Maybe 3D is something I should be tapping?" So here I am. I'm hoping I can say so long to the days of sifting through 120 pages of stock photos looking for juuuust the right hand, in just the right pose, with just the right angle and lighting. It can get infuriating. I'm really psyched to put some of this stuff to the test!
So I doub't I'll ever make anything that's 100% a render. I'll probably just be grabbing torsos and arms, hands, shoulders, etc. Or maybe I'll get addicted and do more, lol.
It's so great to see other cover designers, though!
Welcome! And really don't worry about the addiction thing.... never happens.......not a problem at all..... ha ha ha ha ha
I think some of the best book covers I've seen use pieces of both the 2D and 3D world combined together. When I first got into this, I expected to be able to completely render a book cover. While that is feasible, it isn't practical for a lot of us. A lot of postwork goes into creating spectacular renders so if you know photomanipulation, you are ahead of the game right there. Your best bet is to render out your stock characters in the poses you want and then do everything else that you are already doing. Your instincts are right there. Sometimes, you might get lucky with some renders that would be great for book covers but those will take a lot of work. I want to do a series of menage covers and I'm practicing poses for those. Talk about not much in the way of stock for a niche. Bugger, that's a difficult niche. I can certainly understand not having a great option for LGBT romance covers. Those are hard to find, too. There are a few good couple pose sets that can be used fairly easily for same-sex couples in the shop.
You may find with couple renders that you'll have to use different lighting for each depending on the skin on each figure. More so with interracial couples than with couples of the same skin color. There are tricks you can use to pose them together and render them separately, each with their own light set up. If you get stumped, just ask.
Other than that. Welcome!
Wow, thanks for the advice! Yeah, I know menage is a tricky niche to supply, too. Talk about a pain. Male menages are like... might as well just fingerpaint it for all the resources out there, lol.
I'm currently of the mind that I LOVE the nude torsos, but will almost certainly use stock photo heads, hair, and clothes. Romance is really persnickety. The market wants photo-realistic models. I feel like you could get photo-realistic torsos all day long, but the faces, clothing, and hair wouldn't fly without a ton of over-painting, and at that point I'd rather use photos since I'm more comfortable in that medium. This works for me, though. I'm really good at head replacement and having an eye for poses and camera angles. I'm not so great at painting skin, however. So I'm excited!
I'm attaching an example of a series I did (and I hope it's not against rules ~sweats~) where every couple is a super heavy photo-manip. At least 6 photos stitched together per couple, sometimes up to 10. In a few of them, especially the last one, I can see places where having a 3D hand/arm/whatever would have helped immensely and been a lot more realistic looking.
You mentioned a few couple sets that might be good for same-sex couples... do you have a link? I tried some searches, but they netted me a lot of odd results, lol.
Welcome! Nah none of us are addicted to this or anything....(we really just don't want to scare you away lol). I've just started to seriously think about doing book covers on a regular basis. I do mostly fantasy and sci fi but wouldn't be opposed to trying out romance either. I never expect to do the whole thing in 3d, I get it as close as I can and then take to photoshop. Sometimes, I don't have to do much, sometimes, I spend hours. Just depends on what I want to do.
And your example is fine, we just can't post the important bits since they do try and keep it at least marginally family friendly.
Look for poses using the keyword Best Friends. Best Friends Forever is the only one for Genesis 3 that I know of right off the bat. There are a few couple pose packs over at Rendo, but I haven't bought any of them so I don't know what figures they are for or if they are male or female. I know there are a couple of pose packs for the girls in other generations (G2F, I think?) in the shop here. Also, check out Serene Night's thread in the Art Studio. She mostly does renders with two male characters from a world that she created and she is always giving reviews and suggestions for pose packs that can be used for male couple poses. I don't have a lot of couple pose packs to be able to tell you which ones work best but some poses that are made for the ladies like the best friend poses can be used for the males. You'll have to do some tweaking though. But, I'm sure she'd be happy to tell you which pose packs she likes best for her guys if you ask her.
I usually do all of my own posing when it comes to couples and or menage posing. Eventually, I hope to have enough poses to package them up into a freebie. However, those plans are on the back burner until after I get my book finished. I haven't been rendering quite as much lately or playing with poses because I've been trying to get my latest writing project done. Any rendering I've done has mostly been playing with ideas for that book's cover which doesn't have any menage couples in it. It's a PNR so it will have the typical "man chest" image. Though I'm lucky that it will also have one of the most awesome tattoos ever for cover thanks to one of the vendor's here so I'm hoping it will still stand out a little even if it looks somewhat similar to the others in its genre. In fact, I'll be posting a 'promo' image for the character I created for the cover as soon as I've finished some post work on it here in a little bit in my thread over in the Art Studio. I'm still playing with different poses to see what I like so I haven't finalized any 'stock' of him yet.
Ahahahaha, I see you are seasoned in publishing! I'm like 40k into my own (contemp mpreg) novel at the moment, so I know the feeling. I did find a couple relevent things on Rederosity and went ahead and bought a G8 pose set since there was a sale going on. If I can figure out how to load it, I'll play around with that. I see Serene Night's thread mentioned a lot, so I'll have to check that out when my family isn't afoot looking over my shoulder. Friggin holidays.
Excited to see your tattoo dude! Thanks for the help!
(brief glimpse at Serene's thread) Oh yes, this is super relevent to my varied interests!
Oh no, I'm a seasoned reader who knows her chosen genre. This current project will be my first published work. I've already missed a few self-imposed deadlines. I'm determined to get it finished and published by the end of the year though. I'm great at research. I haven't been that great at finishing a complete novel. This is the one that will get done though. I actually tried a novel idea for this book. Outlining. {insert irony here} It took me a lot of partially finished manuscripts to finally figure out that I do much better with an outline. I'm almost finished with the first draft now and, shockingly, I don't have any plot holes that I have to go back and figure out how to shore up. lol.
Update: link to my thread with my custom book cover model that I just finished working on. I hope to have a draft of the book cover that I can post here soon.
I'm certain that the uncanny valley is a problem but even as someone who is accustomed to 3D, I still find that images don't always sit well as covers to my eye. CG has it's own unique look, however well done, and I wonder if the aesthetic is in discord with reader's expectations and what is familiar to them. That may change over time, of course - and I'll confess a bit of a bias as I hanker after the painted covers I grew up with and find the use of photomanipulation doesn't sit well with me either.
I've had another experiment - I dare say many will recognise the design of the Pan books from the 50s and 60s. I created this one with a view to creating a tutorial should I ever get a blog for this set up.
I don't know if I've talked about branding here but I am a big fan of it. While self published authors will often try to use branding based on their name, I don't see enough indie publishers putting their own brand on publications and feel they are missing a trick.
First of all, I think it looks good and eye catching, which is benefit enough but once readers have learned to associate the brand with the type of books they like, then if they recognise that brand, then they will likely click for more info on the strength of that alone and the only thing the picture needs to be doing at that stage is telling them that it's a book they don't have yet. That way a whole catalogue can benefit from the success of a handful of books.
I'm sooo super huge on branding. Having a cohesive 'look' (font types, configurations, tones) is super important. I'm most into doing series branding, since a lot of romances will be 3-7 books. This is a post-apoc series I made for my BFF. She has great sales with this one. They're all pretty heavy photo-manips, so gahhh, wish I would have thought to use 3D for some help on some of them.
That's a great looking set - with the branding based on both type, logo, and the artwork together so the reader can see at a glance that a thumbnail is part of the series they've been reading and that it's not one they already have.
I've posted the wrong files
@angstyg fantastic covers and great branding!
+1 for branding here too.
Here's a series I am working on, I have done my best to pull these together, as someone else did the 1st cover. The Demon's Blade one. The author bought the dragon one from me as a premade (book3) and it tied in really well with the 1st so I really wanted to do the rest of the covers also with flames to really tie them together. (I originally did the sword one with fire too) Fire has very little to do with the books though so the author wasn't too keen on the idea. So now we're going every other one fire/magic. orange/blue.
I'm trying to get a softer less photorealistic look for the rendered artwork on my book covers. Actually more like the look when someone smudge paints their photos and does photo manipulations with them. lol I think both photos and renders get a more illustrative look this way and at least in my mind gives renders less of the uncanny valley effect.
Thoughts?
Does the girl still look to 3D? As it's said we look at it so much it's hard to tell anymore for me. lol