Cover Creation: Hammer and the Trolls

Hammer and the Trolls was a little difficult to dream up a cover for. In the end, I went with a variation on the opening scene, which involved Hammer, the castle and the drop ship. Because the princess is pretty central to the plot, I also needed a princess, but she couldn't be just any princess. She had to be tough and a princess, so I headed on over the Dreamstime.com and began searching.

I ended up selecting four photographs:

Tomasz Tulik supplied my tough-girl princess:

© Photographer: Zoomteam | Agency: Dreamstime.com

Aleksminyaylo1 supplied the perfect Hammer:

© Photographer: Aleksminyaylo1 | Agency: Dreamstime.com

Junichi Shimazaki supplied Hammer's dropship:

© Photographer: Tsuneomp | Agency: Dreamstime.com

and

Igor Stramyk had the ideal castle:

© Photographer: Stramyk | Agency: Dreamstime.com

After that I took the following steps:

1.  Snipped the castle down to book cover size - which was a shame, because I wanted to show more of it;
2. Isolated Hammer;
3. Isolated the princess;
4. Reduced Hammer and the princess in size and arranged them on the cover.
5. Added the dropship.

The cover went through three design changes:

Hammer cover with ship in flight

Hammer cover with ship landed

Hammer cover without the ship

I decided I liked the ship on the ground, but that it needed a tiny little tweak:

Final cover for Hammer and the Trolls