[Radthorne]

There are certainly both pros and cons about being with a small press, but one of the distinct advantages is having input into the covers that go on your books. This is not something that many authors get to do with the larger New York houses.

As Gary found, he had the opportunity to solicit Robert Sammelin to illustrate the covers for his Gemquest books; and similarly, I was given the opportunity by Windstorm to provide my own illustrations for both The Road to Kotaishi and The Sands of Sabakushi.

While I am by no means an artist, I do enjoy messing around with computer graphics. By virtue of having a passing familiarity with a good 3-D modeling program (Bryce, available from DAZ Studios) and image editing programs like Photoshop, I was able to come up with some decent images to use for my books. Not only was it quite satisfying to have my own artwork on my own book, but I could eliminate the issue of trying to get someone else to interpret the vision that was in my head.

Here are my four covers so far, somewhat larger than in the Books thread:

http://www.sff.net/people/radthorne/Kotaishi Part 1 Six inch.jpg

http://www.sff.net/people/radthorne/Kotaishi Part 2 Six inch.jpg

http://www.sff.net/people/radthorne/Sabakushi Part 1 Six inch.jpg

http://www.sff.net/people/radthorne/Sabakushi Part 2 Six inch.jpg

Over on my website (http://www.sff.net/people/radthorne/AboutTheCover.htm) is a brief outline of how I used Bryce to create the Kotaishi cover.

I'd be interested to hear from anyone on the topic of book cover art, particulary the use of computer graphics to produce them; or just on computer graphic art in general.

Update from May, 2006: This very loooong, and graphics-intensive thread, started out talking about covers but rapidly became a forum for displaying the various artwork projects that I've been working on. If you start at the beginning and work your way through, you will be able to watch my transformation from total neophyte with using the people-generation program to something hopefully a bit better. Along the way I periodically demonstrate some of the techniques in use. If you'd prefer to skip the preliminaries (some of which are really embarrassingly bad at this point!) and want to skip to the latest stuff, head for some of the most recent pages of the thread.

Update from September, 2006: After straining the capacity of good ol' SFFWorld, it was recommended to me that I close this thread and start a new one, which I have done. The current thread is the one called Computer Art, and is where all of the new stuff and attendant commentary is located. However, do feel free to read through any of this one that you like, since it does still show an interesting progression as I worked with the tool.

[Radthorne]

The program I used for the covers for Kotaishi and Sabakushi (Bryce 5.0) does not have a built-in facility for modeling people;this was one of the main reasons why I used structures for the illustrations. I did have a program that could do people, but the results from the version of it I had (Poser 3) were not so great, nor was the program very easy to use. I also had a creative reason for not using people - as an author, I didn't want the pictures I put on the cover to pre-form readers' images of the characters, their clothes, etc; I wanted the reader's own imagination to build upon the descriptions from my words.

However, having people on covers does tend to improve sales (at least that's what I recall reading somewhere...) And now I have a program that does a much better job of handling people. I've been experimenting with my new program (DAZ Studio), and below is a picture I put together in about an hour and half this evening (with figures created in DAZ and then exported to Bryce, where I built the walls, etc.) It's pretty rough, particularly my quickie backdrop, but it serves as a good example of what can be done. So I'm thinking that I'll probably end up putting some people on the cover of my third book.

I'd be interested in your opinions on the topic of people on covers - pro, con?

http://www.sff.net/people/radthorne/Group Duel 01.gif

(Sorry 'bout the Bat'leth... it was what I had to hand!)

[Rocket Sheep]

Whose that girl in the black. Is that our little street urchin?

[Radthorne]

Naw, that's not Nusumi. She'd be a little shorter...

These were just some generic figures I came up with. They start in the program as plain-jane Anglo figures, with no clothes and no hair, standing with their arms out at their sides. Then you add facial features and skin textures (Asian in this case), clothes, props like swords, and then pose them. The woman is wearing a tunic top, but the pants that go with it didn't fit right. So I used some track suit pants and changed the color to black to match. The hood is actually a hajib prop with a veil, which I also changed to black, and thus made a Ninja hood out of it (or an Anasatsu hood, to use the name for a similar cult in my books).

[juzzza]

If you knocked that up in five minutes I would say you are in the wrong business!!!

I'm not sure about computer game style graphics for people though. I think your covers are fantastic for your published books. If you were going to use that style, I would say avoid full-face (or half face). So the cover in your example above, would be looking over the un-masked character's shoulder, straight at the ninja, as that would be fine.

Hey, the company I work for take that approach with real photographs (I.E. no full face images) and the reason is similar to the one you express above. In our case, we don't want clients associating or worse, not associating with the faces we use in adverts/brochures. For you, yea, you don't want to impose your idea of how your character's look too heavily... God bless the ninja hood!!!

[Radthorne]

If you knocked that up in five minutes I would say you are in the wrong business!!!

I'm not sure about computer game style graphics for people though. I think your covers are fantastic for your published books. If you were going to use that style, I would say avoid full-face (or half face). So the cover in your example above, would be looking over the un-masked character's shoulder, straight at the ninja, as that would be fine.
Thanks, Juzza!

That's a good idea, using a hooded character that way. When I was considering the earlier program, Poser 3, since the people didn't look so hot I was going to do something similar, by showing them from the back looking at something interesting in front of them.

The DAZ program actually does a pretty good job with faces. Here's an example (http://www.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=2223&cat=8) of one of the "people" packages, that shows both normal humans and something a little different. The human characters can end up looking pretty realistic, I think.

[Gary Wassner]

I think your covers are great, Kevin. But I would be very careful about using figures that are computer generated. In my opinion, they give the books a game-like appearance, almost like the cover of a pc game or a nintendo game. I think that might cast your writing in the wrong light to a reader who is browsing the shelves and doesn't know what you do.

[Rocket Sheep]

Ahem, don't say anything about Nintendo, Gary! But the characters do look stiff and barbie dollish.

A good thing to do would be to get Tblue to make you a photo. She has access to men with big swords and costumes and fabulous NZ scenic backdrops. A bit of forest or a crystal clear lake or a mountain in the background would be good.

[juzzza]

Nooooooooooooooooooooo!!!

Do NOT go for photos, that's worse than anything... Look what happens when you make people dress in fantasy gear!!!

http://exotica.fix.no/gallery/games/images/b/Barbarian.jpg

[Rocket Sheep]

Did I say "use porn stars"?