Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Book Cover: Damnation (Maiden-At-Arms Series)

I like making book covers with Gimp. Having a tight, very tight budget I can't pay a digital artist to make covers so I have to do it myself. All available cash I have I put into editing my stories. It's the one thing I can't adequately do myself. Any follower of my blog would know by now I'm no grammar genius.

Anyways this is my most recent made book cover. I did something different and tried make it more fantasy and less horror. Also I tried to give it a feminine touch.

I love Gimp, it takes a while to get proficient in it, but once you are you can make beautiful things with it.

*Update (Changed the author name color + BG color change)


4 comments:

  1. I think it's a beautiful cover. Gentle and girly and scary as heck. The only suggestion I'd make is to not put red on neon purple like what you've got there. It hurts my eyes. I'd suggest either replacing the red outline with gold, or muting the purple to a blue color in the same "family" as her dress. And I think I'd do the second more than the first. The red outline picks up the red on her lips and eyes and really pops.

    And I heart GIMP too. I have to pair it up with Photoshop Elements so I have my full arsenal of art tricks (filters, Dodge/burn brush settings that actually work) but I actually like its paint and smudge settings better than Photoshops. I work a lot faster.

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  2. Hi Chris. I made the BG overlay blue, and the author font white. I tried many colors before, but so far I like the purple and blue most. I think purple makes it a bit more creepy and blue more aesthetic pleasing.

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  3. Yeah, that looks good.

    Purple does make it creepy, but it clashes too much. It's hard to pull off as a color combination, especially when the brightness is all the way up. The red eyes are already giving it a creep factor, so you really don't need to dial it up that much.

    This way looks really, REALLY good.

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  4. I might use both covers :D One for amazon the other for smashwords.

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