Tag Archives: book cover

April 19, 2017 · 6:57 pm

Behind the Scenes – Entrance to Dark Harbor

A cover for Melange Books. For this cover, we wanted to keep the same style as the first book, Dusk Runner. I used the same two textures to create the background (though I made sure to do the retouching on the basic layers this time, so that next time will require less retouch work). The author already had an image in mind for the main picture. While it wasn’t from one of our usual stock providers, I used the provided image and their description of the ship to find a similar picture at Dreamstime. I kept the text placement and style the same (though some adjustments had to be made, since the title was longer). We also tried two different font colors, a pale, near-white blue, and then a light blue. We ultimately chose the light blue since the color was still visible and provided the closest match to the previous title.

This is the result:

Stock images from Dreamstime:

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-images-brown-leather-texture-image21958744 – leather texture

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photos-old-yellow-brown-vintage-parchment-paper-texture-image24082203 – paper texture

https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-image-sailing-ship-image12784651 – ship silhouette

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Filed under Book Covers, Uncategorized

Tagged as book cover, cover art, cover design, Creating a fantasy cover, Dusk Runner, Entrance to Dark Harbor, fantasy, fantasy covers, fantasy series, Mathias Colwell, Mathias G.B. Colwell, Melange Books, series cover art, Stephanie Flint, The Dark Arrow Trilogy

April 9, 2017 · 5:47 pm

Behind the Scenes – Sojourn: The Beastlands

A cover for Melange Books. For this cover, we wanted to match the style of the previous books, The Wildlands and The Deadlands. I kept the general placement of the titles and author name the same (though we did experiment with different placements), plus we kept with the general theme of the two characters walking on a path to a different destination. In this case, we used the same model imagery from the second cover, but I did a few adjustments to their images to make them seem a bit different (pushed them closer, adjusted the girl’s hair a bit, and flipped their images). We added a couple pieces of deserted imagery to add to the abandoned feel, and I used a lot of Photoshop masking in layers to get the various jungle layers to mesh properly and look natural.

This is the result:

Behind the Scenes - Sojourn: The Beastlands Book Cover

Behind the Scenes - Sojourn: The Beastlands Back of Book Cover
Stock images from Dreamstime:

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-jungle-green-thickets-mountains-malaysia-image56303604 – jungle
https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-images-abandoned-road-image16324304 – road
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-tropical-rainforest-khao-yai-national-park-thailand-world-h-image68662437 – jungle overlook
https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-abandoned-diner-photo-taken-off-interstate-i-usa-image56088809 – abandoned diner
https://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photography-abandoned-car-image23149927 -abandoned car
People – From the Dollar Photo Club

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Filed under Book Covers, Client Work, Photo Illustration

Tagged as BD Messick, book cover, cover art, cover design, Fire and Ice, Melange Books, photographic illustration, Rayne Mirago, Rayne Mirago saga, Sojourn, Sojourn the Beastlands, Stephanie Flint, The Beastlands, YA novel, young adult

March 2, 2016 · 7:19 pm

Cover Reveal for A Fellow Author – The Goat Children!

Today I’m doing a cover reveal for fellow author, Jordan Elizabeth! I didn’t make this cover, but I quite like how it looks!

In the meantime, onward to the reveal! Take it away, Jordan…

* * *

GOAT CHILDREN

A YA Novel with a touch of Fantasy

When Keziah’s grandmother, Oma, is diagnosed with dementia, Keziah faces two choices: leave her family and move to New Winchester to care for Oma, or stay in New York City and allow her grandmother to live in a nursing home miles away.

The dementia causes Oma to be rude and paranoid, nothing like the woman Keziah remembers. Each day becomes a greater weight and love a harsher burden. Keziah must keep Oma from wandering off or falling, and try to convince her grandmother to see a doctor as her eyesight and hearing fail, but Oma refuses to believe anything is wrong. Resentful of her hardships in New Winchester, Keziah finds herself drawn to Oma’s ramblings about the Goat Children, a mythical warrior class. These fighters ride winged horses, locating people in need, while attempting to destroy evil in the world. Oma sees the Goat Children everywhere, and as Keziah reads the stories Oma wrote about them, she begins to question if they really exist.

GOAT CHILDREN will be released March 25, 2016 from CHBB.

This story means a lot to me. Many of the events are taken from my own life when I helped out my grandmother. She was one of my best friends and in many ways, my world. It still hurts to think about how the dementia made her suffer.

As she would have said: without further ado, I present the cover for GOAT CHILDREN. The talented Rue Volley created this cover.

I can’t wait to share this book with all of you! You can mark it as TBR today on GoodReads.

Author - Jordan Elizabeth

About the author: Jordan Elizabeth, formally Jordan Elizabeth Mierek, writes her nightmares in order to live her dreams. With an eclectic job history behind her, she is now diving into the world of writing. It happens to be her most favorite one yet. When she’s not creating art or researching her family tree, she’s updating her blog. Jordan is the vice president of the Utica Writers Club. She roams Central New York, but loves to travel.

Win a paperback copy of my first novel, ESCAPE FROM WITCHWOOD HOLLOW.

Click here to enter the Rafflecopter Giveaway.

All winners will be notified after verification of entry at the end of this promotion. Prizes have been supplied by and the responsibility of delivery are solely that of the author and/or their representatives. Blogs are not liable for non-delivery on the part of the author. No purchase necessary.

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Filed under Writing

Tagged as book cover, CHBB Publishing, contemporary fantasy, cover reveal, giveaway, Goat Children, Jordan Elizabeth, Jordan Elizabeth Mierek, new book, young adult

January 20, 2016 · 6:59 pm

Behind the Scenes – A Wolf Slayer Saga: Sword of Doom

This is a cover for Melange Books. For this cover, we based the style on the first book, Dragon Sword (See the cover of the first book here). The wolf at the top of the cover is the same, as is the placement of the text, and the border on the right side of the book. We also used the same model, though I used two separate images to get the right mood for the cover. I also did a bit of work with the puppet warp and liquefy tools in Photoshop CS6 to get the right build for the character (You can see the original photos in the link of stock images below).

This is the result:

SBibb - Sword of Doom Back of Book Cover
Stock images from The Dollar Photo Club:

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Filed under Book Covers, Client Work

Tagged as book cover, cover art, cover design, designing a book cover, epic fantasy, fantasy, Melange Books, photographic illustration, photomanipulation, Richard Dawes, series design, Stephanie Flint, stock images, Sword of Doom, The Wolf Slayer Saga, using multiple stock images in a cover

November 20, 2015 · 6:46 pm

Behind the Scenes – A Day Without a Night – Book Cover

This is a cover for Melange Books. We wanted to match this with the cover for the first book in the series (Note: I did not make the cover for the first book), so we kept the black background and the same styles and general placement of the text. The author had a few ideas for symbols that they wanted to use, so they found the corresponding stock images. After tinkering a bit with placement, this is the final result:

Stock images from 123RF and Dollar Photo Club.

https://www.dollarphotoclub.com/Search?k=5187071 – sword
https://www.dollarphotoclub.com/Search?k=88389030 – background
http://www.123rf.com/search.php?word=29866867 – moon and sun emblem
http://www.123rf.com/search.php?word=10707247 – book

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Filed under Book Covers, Client Work

Tagged as A Day without a Night, book cover, book cover art, book cover design, book covers, cover art, cover design, designing a book cover, fantasy, JTAdeline, Melange Books, Stephanie Flint, stock art

June 3, 2015 · 7:00 am

Behind the Scenes – Sojourn: The Wildlands

A cover for Melange Books. I had a lot of fun putting this one together. There are quite a few pieces in this particular cover (14 stock images in total), and I worked with the author to get all the right images and choose the best placement for them. For example: choosing what kind of bow the male model should have. Since the art form mentioned a bow, but didn’t specify crossbow or long bow, I emailed the author to clarify. Helpful to ask about these things up front so you don’t spend a lot of time masking out and fitting pieces, only to find it doesn’t fit the story. In the meantime, I enjoyed playing with the lighting and colors.

This is the result:

SBibb - Sojourn: The Wildlands - Back Book Cover
Stock images from Dreamstime:

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Filed under Book Covers, Client Work, Photo Illustration

Tagged as BD Messick, book cover, book covers, cover art, Melange Books, photographic illustration, photomanipulation, post-apolocalyptic covers, SBibb, Sojourn, The Wildlands, YA novel

March 4, 2015 · 7:00 am

Behind the Scenes – The French Couple

A cover for Melange Books. For this one, they already had the main art they wanted on the cover, but they wanted the title redone and a few adjustments made in regards to the overall effects. For this one, I mostly played with adding color to the dark halo around the model’s head, and played with the placement and color of the text so that it felt like part of the cover. This is the result:

The publisher provided the image to be used on the cover.

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Tagged as adding text to covers, book cover, book cover design, cover art, creating a book cover, Melange Books, Nic Penrake, SBibb, Stephanie Flint, The French Couple

April 16, 2014 · 9:00 am

Behind the Scenes – Kragan

This is a cover for Melange Books.

Sometimes the trick in creating images isn’t creating your own image completely from scratch, but combining images and making them look like they’re all part of one logo. For example, the lion crest was its own stock image, but I added the swords in separate. However, I wanted them to look like part of the image, so I erased parts of the swords where they met up with the crest. The result was that it looks like its all part of one piece.

Meanwhile, it’s been a while since I’ve added a logo to fabric material, and I remembered there are a few tricks in Photoshop to do it. Though I didn’t use any one tutorial specifically, these are a few I glanced over before creating the flag image:

This one has some neat tips and reminders (though I only skimmed the video with the sound off). http://www.photoshoproadmap.com/links/go/8308/

This is more of what I was trying to find initially, using displacement maps. http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-effects/texture-map/

Stock images from Dreamstime.

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photos-ancient-castle-edinburgh-image19198663
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-images-horse-knight-armour-helmet-sword-hand-image30467774
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-images-warm-autumn-sunbeams-image16518554
http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photos-medieval-sword-image3628148
http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photo-lion-crest-2-image24850145
http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photography-templar-flag-medieval-combat-society-white-red-cross-waving-wind-against-blue-sky-clouds-image33995287

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Filed under Book Covers, Client Work, Photo Illustration

Tagged as book cover, book cover design, cover art, Dennis K. Hausker, displacement map, Kragan, Melange Books, photographic illustration, photoshop CS6, SBibb, Stephanie Bibb, Stephanie Flint, tutorials

October 17, 2013 · 5:30 pm

Cover Reveal – The Revolving Year

Forgot to post yesterday. Today we have a cover reveal. 🙂

Full size version: http://sbibb.deviantart.com/art/The-Revolving-Year-Cover-405328502

This is a wrap-around cover for Barking Rain Press. (Find the book here: http://www.barkingrainpress.org/dd-product/revolving-year/ )

Photoshop CS6. For this cover, the publisher already had a few images picked out they were interested in. I chose to play with this one, under the idea that the man in the picture needed to be removed, and the season changed to Fall. (See the original Shutterstock image: http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=99948338&src=id ) This was actually quite a bit of fun, and the content aware fill tool proofed to be quite useful, as did the clone tool when I cropped the woman’s hair shorter. The additional fall trees photos are my own. Overall, I quite enjoyed creating this one, especially trying to set the tone. I did the basic title treatment, and the publisher adjusted it to fit their needs.

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Filed under Book Covers, Photo Illustration

Tagged as book cover, book cover design, content aware fill, photographic illustration, romance novel, SBibb, shutterstock. Barking Rain Press, Stephanie Bibb, Stephanie Flint, The Revolving Year, Vanessa Furse Jackson, wrap-around book cover

September 18, 2013 · 6:00 am

Cover Reveal – Slip Sliding Away

This is a wrap around cover I did for Barking Rain Press.

(You can find the book here: http://www.barkingrainpress.org/dd-product/slip-sliding-away/ ).

(See a larger version on my Deviant Art Account: http://sbibb.deviantart.com/art/Slip-Sliding-Away-Cover-394872911 )

For this particular cover, I actually did a photoshoot (three, to get the angle and items right) of my own. The publisher wanted a desk with the drink on it and the photos, and when I first started trying to put it together with stock, I realized I’d have a much easier time if I just set the shoot up myself (especially since we’d just finished that dresser…. which worked well for a desk setting). I set up the glass, notepad, and alarm clock, as well as used an empty picture frame and two gift cards to hold the place for the photos. (Note to self: Next time someone has the stock photos they want used already picked out, just print them off and put directly in the image… it’ll save editing time later). I also changed the card reflections to that of the stock photos (from Shutterstock). For the alarm clock, I quickly discovered the numbers weren’t going to appear on their own (same reason you can’t have your shutter speed faster than 1/200 or you get a black line through your image). We had considered using a digital font for the numbers on the clock, but I found the LEDs just faintly showed in the image, had so I used the overlay tools to bring out the parts I needed.

I also changed the color of the overall image so it’d look more like night (I played with in-camera color settings, but found Photoshop was a bit more versatile for me). I did try to angle the lights (Alien Bees) so they’d look more like a lamp or low window.

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Filed under Book Covers, Client Work, Photo Illustration

Tagged as alien bees, Barking Rain Press, book cover, book cover design, contemporary fiction, novel, photo illustration, photography, photoillustration, photoshop CS6, SBibb, Sean Mulcahy, shutterstock, Slip Sliding Away, Stephanie Bibb, Stephanie Flint