Stay tuned.
Showing posts with label cover. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cover. Show all posts
Upgrade!
Here's the final cover for the new book. No, I haven't just been playing in Photoshop this whole time. I've been rewriting, reworking, formatting, relearning Kindle formats and Createspace specs and how to get Scrivener to put it all together. The book will be out very, very, very soon, but for now, please enjoy the cover upgrade.
Something to Judge the New Book By
Comet Jack 2's cover is getting closer. I'm tackling it myself this time around, which involves much learning on the fly. I have a few chops, but not enough to generate something good on my own. Luckily I have lots of help.
First and foremost, the Comet Jack logo was designed by Phineas X. Jones, for the first book. So that will stick around, of course, to keep the series unified. The red 2 is all me, so don't blame him for that. I also pasted in the star field he created for the first book, so Phineas deserves much credit. But again, none of the blame.
Next I took a photo of my son's hand. I removed the background, stretched out some of digits, played with the color and contrast and such, and then painted a texture over it. I found a set of free fish/reptile scales brushes here. Thanks, Tijo! I used some other tricks to play with lighting, add shadows, wrap the scales a bit. Oh, and generate webbing of course.
NASA provided the ocean-world planet. I searched for "ocean and clouds" on their Great Images in NASA website. I pretty much pasted that on as is. Which ocean-world is that? It's actually the one we live on, though here it's standing in for an alien world. Thanks, Earth!
There's still more work to do on the cover, but I think it's coming together. If you have any advice, please leave it in the comments. When you stare at something for awhile, you tend to miss the obvious, so please feel free to point anything out.
First and foremost, the Comet Jack logo was designed by Phineas X. Jones, for the first book. So that will stick around, of course, to keep the series unified. The red 2 is all me, so don't blame him for that. I also pasted in the star field he created for the first book, so Phineas deserves much credit. But again, none of the blame.Next I took a photo of my son's hand. I removed the background, stretched out some of digits, played with the color and contrast and such, and then painted a texture over it. I found a set of free fish/reptile scales brushes here. Thanks, Tijo! I used some other tricks to play with lighting, add shadows, wrap the scales a bit. Oh, and generate webbing of course.
NASA provided the ocean-world planet. I searched for "ocean and clouds" on their Great Images in NASA website. I pretty much pasted that on as is. Which ocean-world is that? It's actually the one we live on, though here it's standing in for an alien world. Thanks, Earth!
There's still more work to do on the cover, but I think it's coming together. If you have any advice, please leave it in the comments. When you stare at something for awhile, you tend to miss the obvious, so please feel free to point anything out.
Beta batch away!
I've just finished compiling the .epub, including this awesome cover from Phineas X. Jones. I've contacted several generous beta readers who will look for formatting issues and the like. Some of them have read several versions of Comet Jack, so I don't use the word "generous" lightly. This is my last chance to catch anything boneheaded that has made it this far into the project. The step after this one is... going live.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)