Self-Assignment, Part Two

 Okay, so it's not a book cover, but instead of writing my 10-page paper this weekend, I decided to download free trials of Photoshop and Illustrator and mess around with those. These are just a couple sketches of the two main characters from the story I'm writing (the ones I posted a few weeks ago). I took them into Photoshop and Illustrator and basically did a lot of the same stuff to them that we did for the Winona book cover. It was a lot of fun and I actually managed to figure out a few new things in the programs!

Final Book Cover

Here's my final book cover redesign! I'm pretty pleased with it...at least, I think it's a little better than the original. I had a lot of fun doing it, especially after we did the Winona exercise, which helped a lot with the image I found for the cover (which was actually an image of "ghosts"...but I think it works for a fantasy novel, too).

Book Cover Redesign

The book cover I'm redesigning is Stalking Darkness by Lynn Flewelling. It's the second book in one of my favorite series, but I don't think the cover design is all that great. There's a lot going on, it's kind of confusing, and the colors clash. I really just don't like it. I took a look at some of the other fantasy-genre books I own to get an idea for a redesign, and I think I ended up with something pretty good. Hopefully it actually turns out that way.

The Walking Dead

These are basically different versions of the same thing. On the left is a poster advertising The Walking Dead, a TV show, and The Walking Dead, the graphic novel the show is based on. After doing our exercise over corporate logos and how they can convey different emotions or ideas just based on color, I figured the same idea can be applied in what typeface is chosen. In the image on the left, the typeface is sans-serif and looks a little threatening, especially when paired with the image of the single guy on an empty interstate lane. In the image on the right, I think the typeface looks kind of lighthearted and humerous when compared to the subject matter of the cover (and as we all know, zombies are no laughing matter, right?). At this point I'll admit I haven't finished reading the first volume of the graphic novel yet, but it's definitely anything but funny. Guess that's the difference a typeface makes.

Color and Emotion

Because we usually think of the color blue as being associated with sadness, I thought this painting was particularly interesting. The girl looks sad, but the dominant color scheme of the image is shades of red. There is a little bit of blue, but it's mostly used as shadow, and doesn't really pop when compared to the bright red of the girl's hair, under her eyes, and lips. I don't think it'd be easy to mistake the sadness in this painting as another emotion, despite the color scheme being so bright and in-your-face.

Self-Assignment

So this is one of the sketches I made of a couple characters from my zombie story. For a self-assignment, I'd like to come up with a cover to the story featuring these two guys. They're kind of cartoon-y, so it might be fun to create a cover that's got elements of comic books or graphic novels to them, or at least reflects that somehow. I've been working on this story for a while now, so I've grown very attached to these characters and just think it'd be fun to add a little something to them.

Color Balance

Another weird, abstract-y image. I thought it was a good example of color balance because it's got the big, bold blue streaks along the right of the image, which is balanced out by the single blue streak on the left, as well as the more neutral-colored circle that sits more to the left. The color scheme looks like it's not quite complementary, but pretty close to it since the main colors appear to be red and blue.