Latest Cover Design: Dear Tiger: I Like Your Lab

This is the second cover I worked on in February. It belongs to the same series as Dear Tiger: Don’t Look Back. Cover creation was a little simpler from the perspective of deciding on a background and lettering, but composition took a little decision.

To start with, I followed the same steps as I did last week, using a black background and importing the background art by Roberto Pirola at Dreamstime, as well as creating the title using white letters in Segoe Print Bold, and the byline using white letters in Tiger Rag LET.

After that, I had to decide on what I wanted to add, and, this time, I decided it was eyes. It took me a while to work my way through the Dreamstime stock images, before I decided to purchase a lovely set of beasteyes by Plus69. The only problem I had was that the image was a long, narrow band, and not at all book cover shaped, so I knew I would have to isolate the eyes and position them closer together to get them to fit on the page.

As I worked in GIMP, I discovered I couldn’t isolate both eyes in the same image. That is, I couldn’t cut around one eye, and then isolate and cut out the other, so that they were on different layers, with the background on a third. This meant I had to save the image twice under different names (left eye, and right eye, worked fine), and go through the process of shrinking the image so that no one side was longer than 525 px, before cutting out one eye, returning it to the image as a separate layer, and then making the background disappear, and returning the image to its original dimensions and saving it again.

Once I had the eyes, I opened them as layers in the cover document, and then used the move tool to position them, and the erase tool to finalise the shape, and to blur the hard edges of the isolation. I also adjusted the opacity of the eye images to that the planet background could be partially seen through them.

The final step was to use the ‘Brighten-Contrast’ button on the ‘Colors’ tab drop-down to give things a bit more definition and darken up the background so that the white lettering was easier to read.

And this cover was complete - again with many thinks to GIMP, and the artists at Dreamstime.

New Cover: Dear Tiger: I Don’t Think I’m Human Any More

The fourth, and final, cover completed last week was for Dear Tiger: I Don’t Think I’m Human Anymore, the second book in Carlie Simonsen’s The Tiger Letters series.

As mentioned before, I followed the common planets’ theme, using artwork by Roberto Pirola, and the emphasised a story element using photography by Stefano90, both sourced from Dreamstime.

The process was similar to those before, and I used GIMP to isolate elements in the chemistry photograph, and bring them closer together, and also to alter the opacity of the planetary art work.

The final cover is as follows:

Trapped in a room, and unable to hug her family, Simone knows she is changing. She just doesn’t know what she’s changing into, or how long it will take. The company doctors won’t tell her, and Tiger seems so far away. But at least he writes back, and he’s trying to help. Maybe, together, they can find a way out.

Latest Cover: Dear Tiger: I Miss You

The second cover completed this week was a reworking of an earlier cover for Carlie Simonsen’s Dear Tiger. The title has been updated, and the series is now planned to be five books long, so a set of covers needed to be created to pull the series together.

Carlie’s chapter books use Segoe Print Bold for the Title, and Tiger Rag LeT for her byline. I use a black base, and then build up from there.

Apart from the title and by-line branding, I had to figure out a slightly different look for each line, so, starting this year, I will be working with the older covers to update each series. In The Tiger Letters series, I’ve decided to use a series of planets as the background, and then add a second picture to emphasise some of the other content in the story.

I’ve also added in the series name and the book’s place in that series, and retained Dear Tiger as part of the title. This sometimes makes it hard for the entire title to fit, but we’re working on that. The pictures below show the original cover, followed by the place-holder cover, and the cover final. There’s not a log of difference, but it’s there.

Planetary artwork was by Roberto Pirola and sourced from Dreamstime, while the photograph of the notepad, pen and envelope was by Feng Yu, and also sourced from Dreamstime. I have manipulated both pieces of work and combined them to form the cover using GIMP.

“Dear Tiger, this has been the best day ever… but I lie.”

Simone Michaels is in trouble, but she doesn’t know how deep. Her parents’ expedition has gone missing, and that she’s afraid she’ll go missing, too. Will she get the chance to see her mum and dad, again?