Latest Cover Design: Mack ‘n’ Me: Origins

Looking back, I can see that February was a month for designing science fiction covers… and that this is a trend that is likely to continue, given that there is also a series of science fiction novels coming.

Here is the cover process for the novel. Knowing it was going to be a series, I knew it would be ideal if I could find several photos with the same models dressed the way I needed them. That part was essential. This was trickier than it sounds because I wanted a female with a gun. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it still hasn’t changed. Male photographers… and even some female ones, don’t seem to understand that women who can use a weapon should be dressed – and posed! – like they mean serious business… not like some sex kitten for whom a gun is a novelty toy, and the battlefield a far off idea, and certainly not like a victim waiting to happen.

 

I wanted a picture for a female lead who was tough, savvy, and knew how to use the weapons she carried. I wanted someone looking purposeful, not afraid, mischievious, or wanton. It took me a while to find one, and then I came across a series of character images by Yekophotostudio at Dreamstime. Images with a girl AND a guy who both look like they’re ready to deal some serious business. I had found my Mack and Cutter – and they were even in the same photo. Bonus!

First up, I chose a different font to the one used for the title of C.M.’s short stories. I wanted something a little bit more ‘science fiction’. For this, I used GIMP’s Verdana font—and I used GIMP’s Sylfaen for the byline. The background layer, I kept black.

The second step was to use the ‘Open as Layers’ option under the ‘File’ tab to import Keremgor’s ‘science fiction buildings’ image (also from Dreamstime) into the cover. It was a little small, so I had to use the ‘Scale tool’ in the Toolbox to increase the size.

(TIP: When using this tool, make sure the chain link beside the height and width boxes is UN-broken, or the image will not size proportionately.)

I also had to move the picture layer down in the 'Layers' box so that it sat behind the words' layers.

The second thing I did was use the ‘Flip tool’ in the tool box to reverse the image so the buildings and moon were on opposite sides to the original. The final step in this phase was to drag the image around using the ‘Move tool’ in the Toolbox, until I had it positioned where I wanted, before I used the ‘Autocrop Image’ option in the ‘Image’ tab drop-down to trim the layer to the cover size and excise any unneeded portions of Keremgor’s image.

 

After that I went through the process for isolating Yekophotostudio’s characters from their original background, and using the ‘Open as Layers’ option in the ‘File’ menu to import them into the cover image document. After that, I resized them, and then increased the contrast of that layer using the ‘Brightness-Contrast’ option in the ‘Colors’ tab drop-down.

I didn’t like the hard edges to the flames, so I used the ‘Erase tool’ in the Toolbox, choosing a circle with blurred edges, and adjusting its width and opacity before using it to fade the fire and blur and blend the edges into the background image. Once that was done, I blurred the hairline, the gap between the characters and other edges that bothered me.

When I was happy with the way the character image blended with the background image, I played with GIMP's ‘Brightness-Contrast’, ‘Color-Balance’ (blue), and ‘Hue-Saturation’ (blue) options to be found under the ‘Colors’ tab on the top menu—and then I blurred the hairline some more, because it had started to bother me, again.

This is the final cover:

Latest Cover Design: Dreams of the Serpent

The third cover designed in February was another science fiction cover, but for a short story – and one set mainly on a world. The hardest thing about this cover was finding a suitable alien landscape. I wanted a rocky plateau, but couldn’t find one that would allow me to put a humanoid figure in the foreground, so I decided on a river background. That was more accessible, and I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of artwork I found.

This cover only shows part of the entire river image by Melkor3d at Dreamstime, and the artist has quite a number of other evocative landscapes that would make suitable book-cover backgrounds… or for other projects.

Because I’ve worked on a number of these short story covers now, the branding is fairly settled, so I can prepare the title, background and byline quite easily. I use Berlin Sans FB for the title, and Baskerville Oldface for the byline – and GIMP for the cover creation. The process is the same I use for Carlie’s titles, where I firstly create a black background and then add the words.

In this case, I had to import the river landscape as a layer, using the ‘Open as Layers’ option in the ‘File’ tab drop-down. Once it was imported, I resized it to cover the cover, and then used the ‘Move’ tool in the Toolbox to position it so the portion of the image that is seen is what I wanted on the cover.

Once I was happy with the background image, and its positioning, I used the ‘Autocrop Image’ option in the ‘Image’ tab drop-down to take away the parts I hadn’t used, eliminating overhang. I then opened up the lizardman image which I sourced from Junichi Shimazaki, also at Dreamstime.

Even though this image was on a white background, I still needed to remove that background, so I saved the image as a new document, using the same file name, but adding ‘isolated’ to it, and then went through the process for isolating the lizardman from its white background. As soon as that process was complete, I closed the new image, and then opened it as a layer in the cover image window.

Once again, I used the ‘Move’ tool from the Toolbox to position the lizardman on the cover, and then I used the ‘Autocrop Image’ option from the ‘Image’ tab menu to trim the cover.

As soon as this was complete, all I had to do was adjust the cover as a whole. TIP: If you want to adjust just one image on the cover, highlight the layer the image is in, and then work while that layer is highlighted (although, on a bad day for GIMP, you might need to work on the image as a separate entity, and then import it). If you want to adjust the entire image and its components, you need to highlight the background layer and work while it is highlighted.

For this image, I decreased the brightness bot negative 61, and then increased the contrast to positive 26, using the ‘Brightness-Contrast’ option on the drop-down menu under the ‘Colors’ tab.

The final cover looks like this:

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.