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| New Novel coming, what do you think of the cover? |
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| dkersten:
My next novel will be out in about 2 weeks (edit, here it is! http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B018J54YGS). I was hoping to get some feedback on the cover art. I had to dig deep with my limited photoshop/illustrator skills... I almost gave up a few times to just hire an artist. I had my daughter, who is in college for art right now (graphic design) working on it, but she is just a Freshman and although she is fantastic with charcoal realism, her ability to take a description and turn it into something great is still not developed. Her results were always a few steps behind what I was able to come up with on my own. I found a photoshop brush I liked that someone created (DNA brush), created a repeating pattern from it, imported it into Illustrator as a brush and applied it to a path in the shape of the infinity symbol. Then I set the perspective, created some masks for the back part of the strand, and then applied effects... I also had to go through manually and create a mask to increase the contrast of the double helix to get it to stand out from the rest, which was a pain. Overall I am happy with the result. This is just a snap of the cover, I had to do the spine and back too for the paperback version. It is based on my first cover so it matches nicely (same fonts, same backdrop with different masks, etc.) |
| harveybirdman:
What about making the infinity symbol symmetrical and have it be still composed of DNA? |
| dkersten:
It looked too generic.. I wanted something more dynamic. Originally I was going to make it one long strand and have it laid out to twist into the symbol with the two other ends trailing off the back part of the symbol, wrapping around the back of the cover, but I just couldn't make it look like I wanted. I'm definitely no artist, just a hack trying to pretend, lol. |
| CheffoJeffo:
Definitely don't straighten out the infinity symbol. I think you were wise not to wrap around the infinity symbol unless you want to do up distinct covers for Print and eBook. It's a decent, clean cover that is a natural progression from the first book (I like the fact you kept the background and changed the colour). Short of going with a professional cover designer, I think you have achieved what you set out to do. It's better-looking than 99% of the SP stuff out there and gives me strong indications of what to expect inside (now, if those clues are wrong, that's on you!). |
| dkersten:
Thanks CheffoJeffo, I think it came out better than what the covers artists are charging $200-500 for, but certainly not professional level. Same goes for the stuff inside, I would love to hire pro editors, artists, etc., but it would run well over $6,000 and I barely made over $5k on The Freezer so far... --- Quote from: CheffoJeffo on November 17, 2015, 04:40:13 pm --- gives me strong indications of what to expect inside (now, if those clues are wrong, that's on you!). --- End quote --- It's ALL on me, lol, but I'm OK with that. I certainly hope the stuff inside is good.. I had one friend Beta/proof read it and he was only able to find one screwed up sentence and one place where a semicolon probably doesn't belong. I'm pretty happy with that (no plot holes, no contradictions or mistakes, etc.) considering I haven't done a final pass and finished the editing. Of course he liked the story and said it was a strong followup to my first, but his opinion is skewed since I'm a friend, so I can't rely too much on that, lol. I think the story will be a good read, I certainly enjoyed writing it. This time around I got to add more fun action scenes since much of the world and many characters are developed already. I was shooting for 100k words and ended at 152k! |
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