Gallery Post - A Public Domain Project

This project will hopefully kill two birds with one stone. I've been interested in producing some pocketbook sized paperbacks of classic sci-fi in the public domain. I also need to brush up and practice some typesetting. And so here we are.

Vicious Vignettes - Some Covers For A Friend

A VERY GOOD FRIEND OF MINE has just finished a second collection of flash fiction and needed a cover to match the first, which was done by someone else on Fiverr. I suggested a fresh start with matching designs for both. I tried to keep it simple but fragmented the text panel to suggest the nature of the content.

The title is Nightmare and the tag line is Ascelon, both from The Scriptorium (www.fontcraft.com). The author's name is, of course, in Lydian, one of my favourite fonts. I had originally used white for her name but thought to try a pale cream instead, which I much prefer, having a softer contrast.

I have designed full covers for print editions but will post those once they are finalised.

As always, click the images to see a larger size.

Gallery Post - Mike Shayne Design #1

CLICK THE IMAGE to see at a larger size. This is the first of two after classic Mike Shayne cover designs. This design, including the primary font and Robert McGuiness art, can also be found on Spanish editions of some Mickey Spillane novels. I'm afraid that my little portrait isn't particularly good but I did manage to figure out the lined effect found on this version of the covers, so I'm satisfied.

It's a great exercise in branding that works very well in a thumbnail. However, this comes at the expense of the artwork which needs more contrast to be seen at a small size than is found in some of the original art.

The main font is from the Scriptorium and is called Shayne, having been based on this line of Mike Shayne books. I'll discuss these as part of a post about cover design at a later date.

Gallery Post - Gold is the Coldest Color

CLICK ON THE IMAGE to see at a larger size. This was another experiment in colour. The title uses a free font, called Merienda Bold, which I think works well for this project. The tag is in Ascelon, while the author is in Lydian.

Gallery Post - Blood Flows in Shades of Red

CLICK ON THE IMAGE to see at a larger size. This one was a bit of an experiment in shades of red. The title font is Nightmare, which you can get from The Scriptorium and was based on an old book font. The tag text is in Ascelon, again from The Scriptorium, while the author's name is in Lydian.

Cover Tutorial - First Cover

FOR OUR FIRST COVER, I think we should keep it very simple. We're going to have a single figure and prop - and that's it. I'm going to assume that you have some working knowledge of the software used, though I'm not going to talk about any very sophisticated functions. I'm also going to assume that you've created the paperback templates as described in my previous post. The programs I'll be using are Poser, Affinity Photo, and Artrage.

For Poser, you could just as easily use DAZ Studio or Carrara. For Affinity, you could use Photoshop, Elements, or GIMP. For Artrage... well, you can use Painter.

Before continuing, I think it worth saying something about why I use a program like Poser to create my source images, rather than using photographic.