Book Covers

mmitchell_houston

Knittingmommy said:

Hi everyone.  Just thought I would pop in and say good-bye and Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.  I'm taking off tomorrow morning for the holiday with DH and the boys and won't be back until after the 1st.  Everyone stay safe and eat lots of turkey.    Enjoy your families.

Have a nice trip. We'll hold down the fort while you're away!

mmitchell_houston

kathrynloch said:

Well, now I'm hopping mad. To top it all off, Dad's place is next door to mine but I can't see his back door from the house. When I came back from the bank, I happened to glance at the back as I went by - someone has been trying to break in. Looks like I might have my son spend a night or two over there (he's nineteen). I figure it's kids trying to get the TV or computer - those are the only things of value over there and they're both so old they're not worth anything. I just need his computer for when I do get the certs because he has all of his account info for different things on there.

Ugh. Like you need to deal with all this junk now? If you can, get the computer out of there now. Then make sure you leave the porch lights on. Also, for less than $25 you can get a couple of  battery-operated alarms. Search Amazon (or just go to Home Depot) and search for Travel Alarms. Anything that belts out some loud noise should be enough to scare your random burglar away, and hopefully start the neighborhood dogs barking.

kathrynloch

mmitchell_houston said:

kathrynloch said:

Well, now I'm hopping mad. To top it all off, Dad's place is next door to mine but I can't see his back door from the house. When I came back from the bank, I happened to glance at the back as I went by - someone has been trying to break in. Looks like I might have my son spend a night or two over there (he's nineteen). I figure it's kids trying to get the TV or computer - those are the only things of value over there and they're both so old they're not worth anything. I just need his computer for when I do get the certs because he has all of his account info for different things on there.

Ugh. Like you need to deal with all this junk now? If you can, get the computer out of there now. Then make sure you leave the porch lights on. Also, for less than $25 you can get a couple of  battery-operated alarms. Search Amazon (or just go to Home Depot) and search for Travel Alarms. Anything that belts out some loud noise should be enough to scare your random burglar away, and hopefully start the neighborhood dogs barking.

Thanks Mitch - come to think of it, Dad has one of those alarms but only on the front door. I've got an ACE Hardware here in town, I'll see if I can pick one up. If figure it's kids because it looks like they tried to take a screwdriver to the back door but couldn't get it open because of the deadbolt. Still, this is a mobile home we're talking about, because they just damaged the area around the door handle and didn't mess with the deadbolt - that tells me it's most likely kids who aren't the sharpest tools in the shed. When they couldn't get the door open they went over to the central AC unit and stood on it to try to pry a screen off a window. It's been raining the past two days and the mud is thick back there. The bricks holding the A/C unit level started to slide in the mud and the damn unit is tipped - almost went into the mud so I figure a kid got a ride he didn't bargain for. The screen frame is broken but the window is solid. While I was back there the neighbor dogs were barking like crazy - so that's a good thing. The back door leads to the laundry room which has another door before you get into the house itself. I'll wander back over there this evening and make sure that door is locked and maybe I can jam a chair or something. Even if the alarms sound and dogs start barking, I don't trust them not to try to grab something and run plus if they leave a door open my dad's cat might get out and he'll never come back in unless Dad calls him. I'm still trying to find a home for him.

Anyone want a mixed Maine Coon? He's huge! Bright orange tabby. Smart too - because he likes to make jailbreaks - he's an indoor only cat - Dad trained him to go to his room. When we'd come over he'd tell the cat to "go to your room" and the cat would run in there and wouldn't come out until he told him to. lol!

mmitchell_houston

Sounds like kids to me, too. A chair under the door handle sounds like a good idea, too.

Good luck finding a home for the cat.

IceDragonArt

Aw Kath that sucks!  Like you need to deal with that on top of everything else.  I hope those kids got a good scare and some nice bruises when that air conditioner slid out from under them. 

kathrynloch

Well, knock on wood, we haven't had any more excitement around here.

Had Dad's memorial on Tuesday and my husband's birthday yesterday and now thanksgiving today. But I'm not cooking, we're going out to eat this evening.

I've been working on stuff mostly to keep my brain occupied and not dwell on depressing things. I've mentioned the Dungeons & Dragons live stream that I watch on Twitch.tv, HowReRoll. Well, I'm friends with the DM - his screen name is Gorebad. To bring the pen and paper RPG to the computer screen, he uses an online program called Roll20. For anyone who has ever played the old fashioned RPG's you know most of the adventure hinges on dice rolls. There's not only the well known six sided dice but 4 sided all the way up to 20 sided and more. Every character has stats and in order to determine if you hit whatever you're attacking and to decide how much damage you do to it is determined by these states and dice rolls. You could have the most awesomest hero ever and be rendered absolutely usesless if you roll a 1 at the wrong time. But every RPG game has different rules, and even in the same game, every character and stat is different. The big thing about Roll20 is that it allows you to roll dice randomly but also customize what dice you use for certain rolls with simple scripts. The viewers watch the appropriate type dice roll across the screen and see the result.

Another thing about pen and paper RPG's was that we used to draw elaborate maps to help visualize what the characters saw. We relied heavily on the DM's description and some folks were better at conveying this than others. Many times we'd draw our characters, a big treasure room, or an encounter against a bunch of bad things trying to kill us. lol! In high school I was pretty good at sketching and a lot of gamers would come to me to draw their characters and whatnot.

Roll20 allows us to do the same thing, creating map tiles that the players and audience can see on the computer screen. You have your heroes, their adversaries, and so on. You can create a floorplan to a tavern where the sorceress of the party picks a fight with a barbarian because he hates magic. You can create a shopkeeper who sells cats - for food and the bag of cats she has beside her are sadly doomed until one of your heroes steals the bag and makes good her escape. Only to give them away later, then learns when they are being attacked by giant spiders that the best defense against these spiders are cats. You not only draw the forest where this attack happens, you draw the spiders, the attack effects, and so on.

So what if you can't draw? No worries, those who can many times make generic stuff available for free, others sell their work for reasonable prices and so on. So if you can't draw or don't have time, then most likely there is something available for you to use or purchase. This is something I wouldn't mind doing. Creating stuff for Roll20 and maybe sell some of it.

There's only one problem, because Roll20 is reproducing the tradition pen and paper game, when maps and drawings were placed on the table with the players standing around it - everything is drawn from the top down angle.

https://roll20.net/

If you visit that link it will take you to Roll20, scroll down a little on the page and you'll see the graphics demonstrated, especially the top down angle I'm referencing.

Now if you haven't made a habit of drawing at this angle it can be really, really tough!

Here are some easy things I came up with in photoshop.

 

I've got a nice aquamarine gemstone.

 

Sunlight reflecting off water (this makes use of the plastic wrap filter in Photoshop).

 

And a pretty flowered plant that I'd like to create stats on because it's highly poisonous. lol! Yes, you can create your own stuff for these games too.

 

 

Drawing this stuff from the top down isn't that difficult. But people, animals and items are a lot tougher. 

Early Wednesday mornings, the DM has started a stream where a few of us hardy souls who can get up at 5:30 in the morning can join him in creating stuff for the adventure. This includes maps, naming NPC's, and stuff like that. We the audience get to participate in creating the adventure for our heroes to survive. Well, at one point we started talking about a hippogryph.

For those of you who might not know what a hippogryph is, allow me to explain. First think of a gryphon (griffon, many different ways to spell it), which is an eagle's head and wings on a body of a lion.A hippogryph is a gryphon combined with a horse. Again numerous ways to depict the animal but most common is an eagle's head and wings on a horse's body. Many images convey the front legs as the bird's legs with the talons instead of the horse. 

Back in the day I've created many a gryphon both drawing and sculpting, so I was immediately interested. But how to draw this thing from the top down? I tried several times and failed miserablely. ARGH! Now what?

Well, DAZ to the rescue!

How do you like that one?

 

Now I didn't create anything new for DAZ - no 3d modeling required. In this case the top down perspective helped my situation because I used it as forced perspective.

I have the Eagle 2 package and of course the Daz Horse 2 pro package. All of the elements are simply stacked on top of each other in Daz. The first is the horse's body of course and I simply hid the head and neck in the Scene tab. I then loaded the eagle but in this case because the head and wings need to be in different proportions in relation to each other, I used two eagles. The first was the head and neck only, the second was the wings only. Everything else I hid in the Scene tab. I then rendered each element separately - i.e. hiding everything but the horse's body, render, hide everything but the bird's, head, render and so on. I then pulled the renders into Photoshop and put it all together.

There are mats for a black eagle, and a black horse, which I used of course. But the black horse actually looks like a dark gray. So I darkened him significantly in Photoshop. I also tried the Golden Eagle mats and the brown horse, but that looked really fake and I couldn't fix it in photoshop. Instead I took the black hippogryph and did a HSL adjustment to make him brown, then a Levels adjustment followed by a Color Balance adjustment.

 

So I was pretty pleased with how it turned out - now I want to see what else I can come up with. lol!

Whatcha think?

Oh and for those in the US - Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

Cheers,

Kath

IceDragonArt

kathrynloch said:

Well, knock on wood, we haven't had any more excitement around here.

Had Dad's memorial on Tuesday and my husband's birthday yesterday and now thanksgiving today. But I'm not cooking, we're going out to eat this evening.

I've been working on stuff mostly to keep my brain occupied and not dwell on depressing things. I've mentioned the Dungeons & Dragons live stream that I watch on Twitch.tv, HowReRoll. Well, I'm friends with the DM - his screen name is Gorebad. To bring the pen and paper RPG to the computer screen, he uses an online program called Roll20. For anyone who has ever played the old fashioned RPG's you know most of the adventure hinges on dice rolls. There's not only the well known six sided dice but 4 sided all the way up to 20 sided and more. Every character has stats and in order to determine if you hit whatever you're attacking and to decide how much damage you do to it is determined by these states and dice rolls. You could have the most awesomest hero ever and be rendered absolutely usesless if you roll a 1 at the wrong time. But every RPG game has different rules, and even in the same game, every character and stat is different. The big thing about Roll20 is that it allows you to roll dice randomly but also customize what dice you use for certain rolls with simple scripts. The viewers watch the appropriate type dice roll across the screen and see the result.

Another thing about pen and paper RPG's was that we used to draw elaborate maps to help visualize what the characters saw. We relied heavily on the DM's description and some folks were better at conveying this than others. Many times we'd draw our characters, a big treasure room, or an encounter against a bunch of bad things trying to kill us. lol! In high school I was pretty good at sketching and a lot of gamers would come to me to draw their characters and whatnot.

Roll20 allows us to do the same thing, creating map tiles that the players and audience can see on the computer screen. You have your heroes, their adversaries, and so on. You can create a floorplan to a tavern where the sorceress of the party picks a fight with a barbarian because he hates magic. You can create a shopkeeper who sells cats - for food and the bag of cats she has beside her are sadly doomed until one of your heroes steals the bag and makes good her escape. Only to give them away later, then learns when they are being attacked by giant spiders that the best defense against these spiders are cats. You not only draw the forest where this attack happens, you draw the spiders, the attack effects, and so on.

So what if you can't draw? No worries, those who can many times make generic stuff available for free, others sell their work for reasonable prices and so on. So if you can't draw or don't have time, then most likely there is something available for you to use or purchase. This is something I wouldn't mind doing. Creating stuff for Roll20 and maybe sell some of it.

There's only one problem, because Roll20 is reproducing the tradition pen and paper game, when maps and drawings were placed on the table with the players standing around it - everything is drawn from the top down angle.

https://roll20.net/

If you visit that link it will take you to Roll20, scroll down a little on the page and you'll see the graphics demonstrated, especially the top down angle I'm referencing.

Now if you haven't made a habit of drawing at this angle it can be really, really tough!

Here are some easy things I came up with in photoshop.

 

I've got a nice aquamarine gemstone.

 

Sunlight reflecting off water (this makes use of the plastic wrap filter in Photoshop).

 

And a pretty flowered plant that I'd like to create stats on because it's highly poisonous. lol! Yes, you can create your own stuff for these games too.

 

 

Drawing this stuff from the top down isn't that difficult. But people, animals and items are a lot tougher. 

Early Wednesday mornings, the DM has started a stream where a few of us hardy souls who can get up at 5:30 in the morning can join him in creating stuff for the adventure. This includes maps, naming NPC's, and stuff like that. We the audience get to participate in creating the adventure for our heroes to survive. Well, at one point we started talking about a hippogryph.

For those of you who might not know what a hippogryph is, allow me to explain. First think of a gryphon (griffon, many different ways to spell it), which is an eagle's head and wings on a body of a lion.A hippogryph is a gryphon combined with a horse. Again numerous ways to depict the animal but most common is an eagle's head and wings on a horse's body. Many images convey the front legs as the bird's legs with the talons instead of the horse. 

Back in the day I've created many a gryphon both drawing and sculpting, so I was immediately interested. But how to draw this thing from the top down? I tried several times and failed miserablely. ARGH! Now what?

Well, DAZ to the rescue!

How do you like that one?

 

Now I didn't create anything new for DAZ - no 3d modeling required. In this case the top down perspective helped my situation because I used it as forced perspective.

I have the Eagle 2 package and of course the Daz Horse 2 pro package. All of the elements are simply stacked on top of each other in Daz. The first is the horse's body of course and I simply hid the head and neck in the Scene tab. I then loaded the eagle but in this case because the head and wings need to be in different proportions in relation to each other, I used two eagles. The first was the head and neck only, the second was the wings only. Everything else I hid in the Scene tab. I then rendered each element separately - i.e. hiding everything but the horse's body, render, hide everything but the bird's, head, render and so on. I then pulled the renders into Photoshop and put it all together.

There are mats for a black eagle, and a black horse, which I used of course. But the black horse actually looks like a dark gray. So I darkened him significantly in Photoshop. I also tried the Golden Eagle mats and the brown horse, but that looked really fake and I couldn't fix it in photoshop. Instead I took the black hippogryph and did a HSL adjustment to make him brown, then a Levels adjustment followed by a Color Balance adjustment.

 

So I was pretty pleased with how it turned out - now I want to see what else I can come up with. lol!

Whatcha think?

Oh and for those in the US - Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

Cheers,

Kath

Fantastic Kath!  Top down makes my head hurt lol.

IceDragonArt

And Happy Thanksgiving as well!

mmitchell_houston

Glad to hear you had a good day without drama. So did I, and it was great.

Cris Palomino

I got the cover for the second Dark Moon series approved and am starting to design the lycan for the cover.

IceDragonArt

Cris Palomino said:

I got the cover for the second Dark Moon series approved and am starting to design the lycan for the cover.

Nice!  I want to be you when I grow up lol!

IceDragonArt

mmitchell_houston said:

Glad to hear you had a good day without drama. So did I, and it was great.

Much less drama at our house than usual as well.  It was really nice!

kathrynloch

Cris Palomino said:

I got the cover for the second Dark Moon series approved and am starting to design the lycan for the cover.

Sweet, Cris! I can't wait to see more.

Ice Dragon Art said:

Cris Palomino said:

I got the cover for the second Dark Moon series approved and am starting to design the lycan for the cover.

Nice!  I want to be you when I grow up lol!

Ditto that!

kathrynloch

First off - let me get this out of the way. I HATE POSING!!! ARGH!!!

lol! Ok, I feel much better now. lol! 

So now that I've got my entry into the newbie contest, I'm working on elements for the cover I want to use it on. The title is Spirit of Dragons, so of course we have our hero and said dragon. But I wanted the couple on there without hopefully getting too overloaded. So I ditched the earlier attempt and started on something new. Typically what I've been doing is getting a premade pose that's close to what I want then fix it from there - especially involving two characters. Unfortunately, we're changing the Genesis builds so much it can be hard to keep up with which pose works for which character and can sometimes get some pretty comical angles. 

So I started tearing my hair out over this pose because I'm using M4 for the hero and Olympia for the heroine. I started working and ended up changing a lot more than I bargained for. I was getting pretty disgusted with the whole thing because it was becoming such a challenge. But I managed to get something halfway decent. So I did a test render and my jaw just about hit the floor.

 

I just added the gradient background so we weren't staring at a bunch of whitespace. But I couldn't believe it this looks so much better than what I was looking at in the viewport. lol!

I really like the lighting and I think the hero's eyes are really expressive. I only let the render go to about half way because I spotted a bunch of corrections I need to make. His hair at the roots looks funny and I've got some poke thru on his neck. Plus, I don't know what's up with the mat on his arm, I'll have to fix that. Her hair needs fixing too both pose and I didn't even set her up for Iray yet because this was only a test render. But I really like how their expressions are a bit pensive because it works with the theme of the novel - his people are in a war for their survival and their future uncertain.

Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised with this one. So I'll make those fixes and see how it goes.

Cheers,

Kath

IceDragonArt

kathrynloch said:

First off - let me get this out of the way. I HATE POSING!!! ARGH!!!

lol! Ok, I feel much better now. lol! 

So now that I've got my entry into the newbie contest, I'm working on elements for the cover I want to use it on. The title is Spirit of Dragons, so of course we have our hero and said dragon. But I wanted the couple on there without hopefully getting too overloaded. So I ditched the earlier attempt and started on something new. Typically what I've been doing is getting a premade pose that's close to what I want then fix it from there - especially involving two characters. Unfortunately, we're changing the Genesis builds so much it can be hard to keep up with which pose works for which character and can sometimes get some pretty comical angles. 

So I started tearing my hair out over this pose because I'm using M4 for the hero and Olympia for the heroine. I started working and ended up changing a lot more than I bargained for. I was getting pretty disgusted with the whole thing because it was becoming such a challenge. But I managed to get something halfway decent. So I did a test render and my jaw just about hit the floor.

 

 

I just added the gradient background so we weren't staring at a bunch of whitespace. But I couldn't believe it this looks so much better than what I was looking at in the viewport. lol!

I really like the lighting and I think the hero's eyes are really expressive. I only let the render go to about half way because I spotted a bunch of corrections I need to make. His hair at the roots looks funny and I've got some poke thru on his neck. Plus, I don't know what's up with the mat on his arm, I'll have to fix that. Her hair needs fixing too both pose and I didn't even set her up for Iray yet because this was only a test render. But I really like how their expressions are a bit pensive because it works with the theme of the novel - his people are in a war for their survival and their future uncertain.

Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised with this one. So I'll make those fixes and see how it goes.

Cheers,

Kath

The pose looks really great Kath, and the expressions are spot on for what you are going for it sounds like

kathrynloch

Thanks Sonja!

Okay I think I got it fixed - so here's the latest full render.

 

What do y'all think?

Cheers,

Kath

Cris Palomino

 

kathrynloch said:

Thanks Sonja!

Okay I think I got it fixed - so here's the latest full render.

 

What do y'all think?

Cheers,

Kath

Kath, I know you're still working on this.  The render came out nice.  The abdominal area is looking a bit odd on him.  One thing you might do is bring their other hands on the other side.  The abdomen is creating this very straight line and somehow almost makes the image part of the figure look cut off...especially as there is a distinct color change from chest to abdominals.  The hands can break up that line, so he also doesn't appear armless on that side.  Just suggestions, of course.

Cris Palomino

This links rather than posts the images I did to show a paint-over I did on a render, so that I don't feel I'm spamming with images.

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/956898/#Comment_956898

kathrynloch

Cris Palomino said:

 

Kath, I know you're still working on this.  The render came out nice.  The abdominal area is looking a bit odd on him.  One thing you might do is bring their other hands on the other side.  The abdomen is creating this very straight line and somehow almost makes the image part of the figure look cut off...especially as there is a distinct color change from chest to abdominals.  The hands can break up that line, so he also doesn't appear armless on that side.  Just suggestions, of course.

Thanks Cris! You definitely have a point. See, I was trying to cheat and avoid posing the arms and hands on the other side if I could avoid it. lol! I'll work on it and see what I can do.

Cris Palomino said:

This links rather than posts the images I did to show a paint-over I did on a render, so that I don't feel I'm spamming with images.

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/956898/#Comment_956898

Oh cool! I'm a Photoshop nerd and have been creating custom brushes for stuff like this. I have brushes specifically for skin, hair, and clothing - and more! In fact, I could really use a beta tester or two on some of these if you would like to try some skin and hair brushes. Although, with your Wolf project, maybe some fur brushes. I've got some in addition to the ones I have as freebies on that tutorial I posted that need testing as well. Just let me know and I can put them on my deviantART account.

Cris Palomino

I'd be happy to try them out, Kath.  Always fun to see what people come up with.  :)  By the way, did you see the thread that Chohole posted for tutorials?  We did that to give people a home where they can post theirs and people can find them all in one place.

kathrynloch

Cris Palomino said:

I'd be happy to try them out, Kath.  Always fun to see what people come up with.  :)  By the way, did you see the thread that Chohole posted for tutorials?  We did that to give people a home where they can post theirs and people can find them all in one place.

Yes I most certainly did! And my tutorial has a nice comfy home there! I'm glad you guys did that because finding tutorials can be a real headache. Even you guys as mods running the contests were having fun pulling some things together at times!

I just wanted to show you a quick example of the skin and hair brushes - if you really take your time with them you can get some nice realism.

So here's a before and after on the hero.

Let me put the brushes into a zip file and I'll post a link here to my deviantART account.

Cheers,

Kath

 

IceDragonArt

I'm a big fan of postwork.  For me its just as fun to do the postwork as it is to do the scene. I realized almost immediately that I probably don't need to buy much make up, tattoos, etc becasue I can do all of that myself.  I do have some because I wanted to learn how it worked and some of it  I got before I knew you could do postwork.  Never tried to make my own brushes but I have a HUGE collection of brushes for photoshop.  The hair brushes look like they work very well.

kathrynloch

Okay that took a little more doing than I thought. I did a little PDF thing and of course I can't do it half way. Oh brother. lol!

You can download the brushes in a zip file from my deviant art account here.

I'm the same way Sonja, feel free to try the brushes as well, heck, anyone can give them a shot. I'll have them up for a couple of days simply because I don't want the little punks on DA to come crawling out of the woodwork. Most of the folks are great over there - it's the kids who know-everything-but-don't-have-a-clue that drive me nuts.

The PDF just shows how I work with them. Try 'em out see if they help, are the worst things you ever encountered, or the neatest thing next to sliced bread. lol!

kathrynloch

Okay I followed Cris's suggestion and fixed the arms on the right side. I'm posting only a partial render so it's really grainy but I wanted to see if I was on the right track here. The latest Windows 10 upgrade just about broke my computer. I managed to roll back to my previous version after fighting with it forever, but DAZ started freaking out with render times. This image was taking just over an hour to fully render - it's really fast since I'm using natural lighting. But after the fiasco it took 20 minutes just to barely hit 1%. I think I figured it out and have it fixed - going to go test in a few, but I thought I'd post this to see if I'm on the right track with the arms.

 

Thank you!

Cheers,

Kath

Knittingmommy

Hi everyone.  Thought I would check in.  I started traveling back home today.  Had a lovely stopover to meet Kathryn (and her son) for a late lunch on the way to our first hotel.  She got to meet my litter of boys.  She is just as nice in person than she is on the boards.  I had loads of fun chatting with her in person.  One more day of travel and I should be home on Tuesday by early afternoon.  Then I can get back to my normal routine.  I did actually manage to get some writing done while I was gone so that was nice.  I didn't work on any DAZ stuff.  I'll get back to that when I'm home.

Chris - I love the lycan so far.  Can't wait to see what you come up with for the new cover.

Kathryn - I really like the new cover so far.  Those expressions are spot on considering your storyline.  But, even without the storyline, I love how pensive they both look.  It creates a very strong draw to your characters.  It looks good so far.  I can't tell if it is just the angle or not, but his ring finger and, perhaps his pinky finger, looks like it might still be imbedded in the heroine's fingers.  I'm looking forward to seeing where you go with this.

I hope everyone had a Good Thanksgiving.  I'll post more when I get back home because I've been working on a couple of renders (before I left) that I would like input on how turn them into something that might work as a book cover.  I like how they are turning out, but I'd like all of your input.

IceDragonArt

Thanks Kath, off to do download those now.  And safe travels Knitttingmommy, how fun that you guys got to visit!

kathrynloch

Knittingmommy said:

Hi everyone.  Thought I would check in.  I started traveling back home today.  Had a lovely stopover to meet Kathryn (and her son) for a late lunch on the way to our first hotel.  She got to meet my litter of boys.  She is just as nice in person than she is on the boards.  I had loads of fun chatting with her in person.  One more day of travel and I should be home on Tuesday by early afternoon.  Then I can get back to my normal routine.  I did actually manage to get some writing done while I was gone so that was nice.  I didn't work on any DAZ stuff.  I'll get back to that when I'm home.

Chris - I love the lycan so far.  Can't wait to see what you come up with for the new cover.

Kathryn - I really like the new cover so far.  Those expressions are spot on considering your storyline.  But, even without the storyline, I love how pensive they both look.  It creates a very strong draw to your characters.  It looks good so far.  I can't tell if it is just the angle or not, but his ring finger and, perhaps his pinky finger, looks like it might still be imbedded in the heroine's fingers.  I'm looking forward to seeing where you go with this.

I hope everyone had a Good Thanksgiving.  I'll post more when I get back home because I've been working on a couple of renders (before I left) that I would like input on how turn them into something that might work as a book cover.  I like how they are turning out, but I'd like all of your input.

Thank you very much, Cathy! It was absolutely fantastic meeting you too! I had a great time - if you ever come through the area again please let me know. I doubt I'll be traveling to Florida any time soon but ya never know. I hope you have a safe trip home.

And thanks for the kind words about my render. I took a closer look at the hands and tweaked a little more. It's another partial render. I managed to speed up the renders just a little. I had to reset my antivirus software and it dumped my exclusions so I entered those but it's still taking a lot longer than normal. I'm trying to remember if I missed anything with the exclusions or if there's something else I had set up that I've forgotten about. It's driving me crazy in the meantime. lol! Anyway here's the new hand positions.

His uneven skin tones are starting to really get on my nerves. I evened them out a lot when I worked on the textures for the contest but his face especially still looks sallow, almost like he has a bad liver. lol! So I'm going to pull that mat back into photoshop and see what I can do with it.

 

Ice Dragon Art said:

Thanks Kath, off to do download those now.  And safe travels Knitttingmommy, how fun that you guys got to visit!

Great! Remember these need to be tested so please let me know how they work for you. If you create something please post - I'd love to see it.

Cheers,

Kath

kathrynloch

And another update - okay here's a full render so I hope the hands are okay.

 

And just because I could - I put together the cover idea I had in my head. 

Can you see the effect I put on the word Dragons?

 

Thanks!

Cheers,

Kath

Cris Palomino

Hi, Kath, I think the pose looks much better.  I would suggest thinking about the title.  Look at your thumbnail.  All you see is Spirit...and you barely make out Dragons.  Personally, I wouldn't separate the title if at all possible.  Will there be a landscape or anything?  I't's looking a little comped together presently.  Again, I know this is in the WIP stages.

Edit:  Please note...you have a really strong tangent from the wing to his head to hers.

kathrynloch

Cris Palomino said:

Hi, Kath, I think the pose looks much better.  I would suggest thinking about the title.  Look at your thumbnail.  All you see is Spirit...and you barely make out Dragons.  Personally, I wouldn't separate the title if at all possible.  Will there be a landscape or anything?  I't's looking a little comped together presently.  Again, I know this is in the WIP stages.

Edit:  Please note...you have a really strong tangent from the wing to his head to hers.

Hi Cris - thanks so much for your input on this, you don't know how much I appreciate it.

It's funny but I can't seem to get it through my thick skull to check the thumbnail size while I'm in progress. For some reason that has never made it into the work flow. I noticed exactly what you mean for dragons when I uploaded it here. So I went back to work. I use Fast Picture Viewer Codec it allows me to see Photoshop and other image formats as thumbnails just like windows does with jpgs and whatnot. If I set it to Extra Large Thumbnail it comes close to the thumbnails on Amazon. That way if I don't catch it during the workflow, maybe I'll catch a thumbnail issue when I'm opening and closing stuff.

So this is the one I was working before I read your post, Cris.

Now after reading your post, I went back to work and tried a couple of things.First - no separated title and much more visible.

 

 

I like it but it feels - squishy - maybe I need to get used to it. Although, another aspect to breaking it up would be to make the word Dragons more visible as it would probably be a strong sell point. So I tweaked a little more and came up with this.

Now I can make the couple smaller if I'm getting too crowded here - not too much smaller but maybe just a little.

Whatcha think? Moving in the right direction?

Thanks again for the feedback. All ideas are appreciated - I'll tear it apart and put it back together as many times as I need to to get it right. ;)

Cheers,

Kath