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.

New Cover: Granny Finds a Gas Mask

The third cover completed this week was designed for the first chapter book in the Granny Finds Adventure series, by Carlie Simonsen. In this case, the item Granny found was a gas mask. This was a little tricky to do, but I opted for simple, using a common background, or background idea, with a single item to differentiate it.

The item for this book was the gas mask, for which I found a close approximation in a photo of a gas mask by Exopixel on Dreamstime. The background is from one of my own pictures of some Australian parkland, suitably cropped and darkened. Both gas mask and park land were manipulated by GIMP, and the cover was created by the same program.

Again, I started with a template base, and then layered in the elements I wanted. The process looked a little like this.

The final product looks like this.

Helping Gran is a chore, but with her holding their mobile phones hostage, Gareth and Giselle have no choice. Unpacking boxes of books is no surprise. Unpacking the gas mask is—and so is finding themselves back in the war, in Gran’s war, because ‘some things are meant to be changed’. How on Earth, does Gran expect them to help with this? Better yet, how on Earth, can they get back home?

Granny Finds a Gas Mask is the first book in a series where the things Granny finds lead to adventure, and Gareth and Giselle have to figure out how to get back to their own time and place.

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?