Cover Tutorial - Underwater

UNDERWATER IMAGES NEED a couple of additional tricks to pull off. I'm going to assume that you've looked at building templates and the First Cover tutorial already and will dive right into this one. 'Deep Sea Thrillers' seem to be very popular these days, if only with the writers, so if you're going to supply for the modern pulp market, this is a genre you should work with.

If you are using 3D staging software like Poser, then fortunately, there are a lot of underwater monsters available to buy a very reasonable prices. You can find fantasy monsters, a giant octopus, creatures direct from Lovecraft's imagination, along with a large assortment of sharks, dolphins, and whales. Even a few fish. Best of all, there are lots of prehistoric beasts, most by a chap who sells under the name of Dinoraul. I shall do some posts featuring his work at some point but really, if you mean to do pulp at all, burn that name into your brain - great prehistoric models, and great fantasy beasts. The creatures in this image are his.

The Scriptorium / Fontcraft

THE SCRIPTORIUM IS A FONT FOUNDRY that specializes in reproducing antique and hand drawn fonts. There are so many fonts that you’ll want to put on a book here that you could spend your savings within 10 minutes. So, stay focused and subscribe to their newsletter as they do have occasional sales.

The most cost effective way to shop with them is to buy packages of fonts - I’ve picked up a few of these since starting this project and haven’t regretted any of them.

Pulp Fonts Package

A good place to get started is their Pulp Fonts package, which was my first purchase, and most of which was designed from pulp book cover type. Containing eight fonts, there’s a little of everything.

Free Commercial Use Fonts

IT'S EASY TO THINK that you can’t have enough fonts. This might even be true. Now, pretend that it isn’t. Keep focused on the needs of your project and try to source only fonts that are going to be useful for the covers you are making. Otherwise, you are going to spend all your time amassing a huge collection that you’ll have to sift through every time you want to find something - you’ll also spend a fortune on stuff you may not need.

The next bit of advice is specific to free fonts. Download only what is licensed for you to use commercially, then try out what you do download and if you don’t think you’ll use it or if the quality is not what you had hoped for, then uninstall and delete it.

In this post, I’m going to focus on free fonts that could be of use to you, along with links to where you can get them.

First up is a selection from Fontspring - you will need to sign up to get them but they haven’t been spamming me, so I can recommend them.