- Creating the cover of my novel – Part 1
- Creating the cover of my novel – Part 2
Back on to the creation of the cover. As I said in my previous post, my designer Paul Deuis of Jethryk (http://www.jethryk.com.au) guided me superbly in what I needed to give him. In this post I’ve included excerpts from his emails so that you can see what to expect from a good designer.
So first he gave me an idea of the specifications and why.
“I’ve made the artboard 155mm x 240mm at 300dpi which is a fairly standard hardback size. This way I figure if you stick to digital only then it’s easily big enough, but if for whatever reason you decide to do a print version then we’ll be able to use the image as is and just extending the image to the spine and back.”
My first attempt at a picture using DAZ Studio was the following. I’ve marked out all the things that I did not like about it.
It took me hours and here I was disliking it. I even did not like the yellow texture that I had used to cover the Darkon-suit. However there was some goodness. I loved the setting that I had purchased for it. This was Asian Court 1 by an artist called Jack Tomalin.  The leaping figure was just a basic Genesis Female (comes with base copy of DAZ Studio) and I had covered her in a home made silver and grey patterned texture.
An email from Paul around this time said:
“Ok cool. Early attempts are generally going to be a bit clunky, and as I’ve found for the most part getting the attention to detail right can take ten times as long as getting the basic shape down. Keep at it but whatever you do don’t rush it, or settle for something you’re not happy with. Better to take an extra week getting it out than stick to the schedule and forever be wishing you’d done better.
- Even if you want to do your own art work, find a good designer to guide you.
- If you are going to pay for a designer, then follow their advice. They are professionals in designing. You are not.
- Learn tools such as DAZ Studio, Paint.NET, and Gimp. Even at a basic skill level you can produce something quite stunning.
- Plenty of people have written YouTube tutorials in these tools to help people just like you and me.
- Expect to fiddle around and try different ideas. My picture took me weeks and despite the frustrations I absolutely loved the finished product.