The cover concept is based on the tradition of earlier covers in this line, where I draw elements of the design from the cover designs for any of the short stories published that year and contained in the collection. It was fairly difficult to decide which ones would work best, but here's the process.
The first step was, of course, to put down a black base, and add in the title and author by-line. After that I added in the first element - the dragon from the short story, The Seeker from Hivrala, because what's a fantasy cover without a dragon, right?
Because of the way the dragon is positioned, it was easy to decide to place the other elements in a diagonal line to draw the eye across the cover. For these, I chose the lizardman from the fantasy short, Luck Among Servants, and the unicorn from the urban fantasy short, A Matter of Justice.
The dragon is a modified form of original artwork by Valentyna Chukhlyebova, and was isolated and colour-altered during the cover process for The Seeker from Hivrala. The lizardman is original artwork by Junichi Shimazaki, and was isolated during the cover creation process for Luck Among Servants. The unicorn is from original artwork by Corey A. Ford, and was isolated during the cover creation process for A Matter of Justice. All images were sourced from Dreamstime.com, and all modifications were done using GIMP.
The final thing that needed to be added was a background. For this I decided to take the ocean combination from A White Pinnacle. That background was originally created using photography by Ig0rzh (the lightning over the ocean), and Pumidol Lelerdsakulvong (the rock pinnacle). Those images were manipulated using GIMP, and sourced from Dreamstime.com.
When I was done, I thought something was missing, and decided to add the pixie from Memory's Return and Road Trip to the top right of the cover in order to balance out the dragon. I chose not to add another image to the bottom left, but did move the lizardman a fraction more to the right to add more weight to that side of the cover. The pixie is another piece of art by Junichi Shimazaki at Dreamstime.
The background was still a little bit light for the white lettering, so I used GIMP's brightness and contrast feature to darken all elements, and sharpen their edges. It's interesting to note that contrast defines images more, but also makes them a little darker, as well.
When all elements had been modified with increased contrast and decreased brightness, I noticed that the pixie was still too light, so I selected her layer in the 'Layers' tool bar, and the selected the brightness/contrast option and repeated the process. Once that was done, the letters were more visible even though she was behind them, giving me the final cover image.
No comments:
Post a Comment