Tag Archives: book covers

March 28, 2018 · 7:00 am

Behind the Scenes – Lesson Plan For Murder

A cover for Barking Rain Press. For this cover, since the mystery involves the murder of a school teacher, the publisher was looking for something that would convey the theme (as cozy mysteries often do). So we chose to have the chalkboard background with a chalk-like font for the title, along with books and pencils on the desk, which would create the sense of a school setting. We also included hints of the murder weapon by having the concealed pills and the spilled coffee… obviously drank from due to the lipstick stain.

This is the final result:

SBibb -Lesson Plan For Murder

Stock images from Shutterstock:

https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/stack-old-books-isolated-on-white-110298509 – books
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/cup-pens-pencils-isolated-74529190 – pencil cup
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/cup-coffee-spilled-on-computer-keyboard-76303951 – coffee cup
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/wooden-table-on-blank-green-board-208701988 – blackboard and table
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/lip-stain-vector-241323901 – lipstick stain
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/pill-bottle-concept-healthcare-medicine-97588814 – pill bottle

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Filed under Book Covers, Client Work, Photo Illustration

Tagged as Barking Rain Press, book covers, cover art, cover design, cozy mystery, creating a cover, Lori Robbins, mystery, school, Stephanie Flint, targeting a genre, teacher, writing to market

July 5, 2017 · 9:20 am

Behind the Scenes – Demon Hunter

A cover for Melange Books. We wanted to match the cover to the first book in the series, Night of the Hunter. We used the same cover model, but a different pose, and similar lighting techniques. However, we switched the background to have more of a setting-based focus, and gave it that stormy lighting to convey mood. We also kept the typography the same and in relatively the same position so that the series was evident.

SBibb - Demon Hunter - Book Cover

Stock images from Dreamstime:

https://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photos-dark-ominous-rain-clouds-lightning-image18357018 – sky

https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-new-orleans-lafayette-cemetery-above-ground-tombs-image60673899 – cemetery

https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-abstract-smoke-moves-black-background-image48826804 – fog

https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-business-man-holding-gun-monochromatic-background-image48451524 – man

http://depositphotos.com/39716167/stock-photo-couple-with-sword-and-historical.html – head

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Filed under Book Covers, Client Work, Photo Illustration

Tagged as book cover design, book covers, cover art, fantasy, Jack Slade, Melange Books, Richard Dawes, Stephanie Flint, thriller novel

September 7, 2016 · 9:02 pm

Announcement – Sign-ups for the Distant Horizon Book Cover Reveal are now live!

Do you have a blog? Want to take part in a cover reveal for Distant Horizon?

If so, head over to Lola’s Blog Tours, where sign-ups are now live! 😀

( http://www.lolasblogtours.net/cover-reveal-distant-horizon-by-stephanie-and-isaac-flint/ )

The cover reveal will take place on September 20th. 🙂

Distant Horizon is a young adult dystopian novel with superhero elements. It’s the first in the series.

The Community is safe.
Unless you have superpowers.

Sixty years ago, a hallucinogenic plague annihilated half the world’s population, leading to the formation of the Community—an international government that promises its citizens safety, security, and efficiency. Every day, Community citizens swallow a mandatory pill to ensure their immunity to the plague. A year after graduating high school, they take the Health Scan.

Most pass, and continue with their lives. Others disappear.

Eighteen-year-old Jenna Nickleson hasn’t taken the pill since her senior year in high school. She feels more alive without it, and she hasn’t shown any signs of infection—at least, not until two days after a surprise Health Scan is announced and Special Forces arrive at her university campus.

Spurred by the recent string of hallucinations, Jenna searches for any inkling of what happens to those who fail the scan. Rumor has it that they’re sent away for treatment and, once cured, receive a menial job. But when she uncovers the cruel truth behind the plague, her ideal world is shattered.

Underneath the illusion of safety, Special Forces agents harbor a dark secret.

The plague is a lie.

In the meantime, Distant Horizon is available for pre-order at Amazon, and will also be available from Smashwords distributors, once it finishes the approval process.

Distant Horizon, by Stephanie and Isaac Flint, will be released on October 27th, 2016.

***

Coming soon: I’ll be posting a blog about Isaac’s and my new co-author photo, as well as writing our usual monthly Infinitas Publishing Status report. There’s a lot going on during the next two months! 😀

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Filed under Book Covers, Business Ventures, Writing

Tagged as book cover reveal, book covers, cover reveal, cover reveal signups, Distant Horizon, dystopia, Infinitas Publishing, Isaac Flint, Lola's blog tours, release date announcement, science fiction, Stephanie Flint, young adult

June 6, 2016 · 8:09 am

Behind the Scenes – Shadow Notes

This is a cover for Barking Rain Press. For this cover, the publisher wanted to stick with the blue and white color scheme, which plays a major role in the story. The author provided a few example covers of books with similar tones, which I used to get an idea of the design style: the style of scenery, the font and title placement, and the general mood of the cover.

This is the result:

Book Cover - Shadow Notes

Wraparound Book Cover - Shadow Notes

Stock images from Shutterstock:

http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-351762476/stock-photo-lonely-woman-walking-in-the-park-with-trees-at-snowy-day-snowfall-in-park-with-lonely-walking.html

http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-27596422/stock-photo-woman-with-psychic-pressure-in-a-corridor.html

http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-44825947/stock-photo-walk-in-winter.html

http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-156469889/stock-photo-frozen-land-in-winter-time.html

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Filed under Book Covers, Photo Illustration

Tagged as Barking Rain Press, book covers, cover art, cover design, designing a book cover, Laurel S. Peterson, psychic thriller, SBibb's Photographic Illustration, Shadow Notes, Stephanie Flint

May 27, 2016 · 10:00 am

Behind the Scenes – The Quarter Horse

A cover for Melange Books’s YA imprint, Fire and Ice. This is the fourth book in The Horse Rescuers series, and so we wanted to keep the style the same as the other books. In this case, we kept the same layout and font. We tried a couple different colors as the main color scheme (each book is a bit different), and ultimately settled on the gray-blue.

For the horse image, I used the art form to reference the kind of horse the author wanted, and then I created a lightbox on Dreamstime with several horse options (and I checked to see what general season I should be looking for). The author selected two of those images, which I made rough proofs. Once we narrowed it down, I finalized the cover.

This is the end result:

Rough version of the back cover (subject to change per the Publisher’s needs):

The Quarter Horse - Back Cover Blog

Stock photo from Dreamstime.

http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-images-bay-horse-image3555999 – horse

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Tagged as book cover design, book covers, cover art, designing a book cover, horse story, Melange Books, Patricia Gilkerson, SBibb's Photographic Illustration, Stephanie Flint, YA book covers, young adult

May 20, 2016 · 2:00 pm

Behind the Scenes – Sword of the Quest

A cover for Melange Books. For this cover, we wanted to match the covers of the previous books, Dragon Sword and Sword of Doom. The font and border placement remained the same, as did the leather textured background. The difference was the scene on the front. We tried a couple cover options before we came to this particular setup. (As a note, if you’re the cover artist working on multiple books in a series, and you have all the art forms for each of those books, make sure you don’t accidentally blend ideas from each form.)

Since there’s a lot going on in this cover, the lighting played an important role in balancing the cover. I made sure to have the main character fully lit, and thus in the spotlight. Next up was the woman, but I put her in slight shadow. The reader’s gaze falls first on the man, then her, then finally on the cloaked shadow in the background. The cloaked figure I shadowed the most. Partially because the figure is supposed to be mysterious, but also so the figure doesn’t attract the initial attention from the main character. Then, once all the pieces were in place, I added the specific lighting from the emerald, that way the whole scene fell together.

For the runes on the altar, I drew them in one color on a separate layer and then tinkered with the “bevel and emboss” special effect until they looked like they were part of the stone.

This is the result:

Behind the Scenes - Sword of the Quest - Book Cover

Stock images from The Dollar Photo Club (Stock site sold to Adobe Stock, individual links no longer work): katana // wolf // woman’s head / man’s arm / man’s legs / man’s torso
Stock images from Dreamstime:
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-angkor-wat-temple-inside-corridor-walls-cambodia-image26822490 – temple

http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-image-leather-clad-warrior-image265556 – leather tunic

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photography-ancient-roman-stone-pedestal-image12983352 – stone pedestal

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-emerald-isolated-image16275280 – emerald

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-dangerous-vampire-catacombs-full-skulls-bones-horror-fantasy-image64756682 – cloaked figure

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Filed under Book Covers, Client Work

Tagged as book cover design, book covers, cover art, cover design, covers, designing a book cover, fantasy, fantasy art, Melange Books, photographic illustration, Richard Dawes, scenes on covers, series of book covers, Stephanie Flint, Sword of the Quest, Valka the Wolf Slayer Saga, Working with books in a series

May 9, 2016 · 9:57 pm

Behind the Scenes – Red Sun Over Mexico

A cover for Melange Books. For this cover we wanted to stick with the same theme as the first book in the series, Red Sun Over Panama. I kept most of the same imagery, including quite a bit of the retouching I’d already done, and inserted an image symbolic of Mexico.

To figure out which image to use, I emailed the author about symbolism relevant in the book. Other than the Japanese Red Sun, pulled from the first cover to give this a historical touch, he mentioned the temples as a landmark. So that’s what we went with.

The publisher repurchased a licence for each of the images we used a second time, as well as picked up the new image we needed.

Keeping with the first cover, I hid part of the title behind the landmark. In this one, more of the title is hid than in the first, but I was careful to make sure that the title was still legible.

This is the end result:

SBibb - Red Sun Over Mexico - Back of Book Cover

Stock images from Dreamstime and Dollar Photo Club.

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Tagged as book cover art, book cover design, book covers, H. Paul Doucette, historical novels, Melange Books, photographic illustration, Red Sun Over Mexico, Red Sun Over Panama, SBibb, sequels, Stephanie Flint

April 22, 2016 · 7:37 pm

Behind the Scenes – The Rovers

This is a cover for Melange Books. For this cover, the author already had an idea of what image he wanted used for both the front and back. However, the stock image we looked at initially was marked “editorial only,” so that one wasn’t available. However, we did find a similar photograph on the Library of Congress website that didn’t have any known restrictions, in part due to its age.

So, though it was black and white, I retouched the image and filled it in with color, along with sharpening the picture. (Ironically, while I retouched the back cover image as well, I removed the color from that one). We also found a free font that resembled the baseball logo of the referenced team. This was the result:

Book Cover - The Rovers

I changed the border a bit for the front and back of the print covers, due to the trim lines.

Book Cover - The Rovers - Print Edition

Back of Book Cover - The Rovers

Primary stock images from the Library of Congress: https://www.loc.gov/item/91725980

We had a modern-day image we considered using, but couldn’t due to licencing restrictions.

Post Card Border from The Dollar Photo Club (Now Closed)

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photos-quinn-abbey-image18602883 – Churchyard

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Filed under Book Covers, Client Work, Photo Illustration

Tagged as black and white pictures to color, book cover art, book covers, cover design, Paul Ferrante, photographic illustration, photomanipulation, retouching an old photograph, SBibb's Photographic Illustration, Stephanie Flint, The Rovers

March 25, 2016 · 2:00 pm

Behind the Scenes – On A Midnight Clear

This is a cover for Melange Books. For this cover, the author wanted something that showed a cabin in a snowy region and kept with the dark mood of the story. They had already found an image that they felt worked well, so I was able to find a similar one from the stock site we normally use in order to create the cover.

My first attempt at a proof for this cover included silhouettes of the characters, but it didn’t convey the right mood. So I went a more simple route, using the mysterious, dark purple color as the base of the cover, with a narrow focus on the cabin in question. I also changed my initial font to something a bit more bold.

This is the result:

Book Cover - On A Midnight Clear

Back of Book Cover - On A Midnight Clear

Stock image from Dollar Photo Club:

https://www.dollarphotoclub.com/70616736 – cabin

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Filed under Book Covers, Client Work

Tagged as book cover design, book covers, cover art, designing a book cover, designing a novel cover, ebook covers, Henry Hoffman, Melange Books, mysterious book covers, mystery, On A Midnight Clear, Stephanie Flint, thriller

January 8, 2016 · 9:10 pm

Behind The Scenes – The Devil’s Third Book Cover Remake

Lately, I’ve been working on remaking the book covers for Rebekkah Ford’s Beyond the Eyes trilogy, and I just finished remaking the cover for the final book, The Devil’s Third. (You can see the other two book covers remade: Beyond the Eyes and Dark Spirits).

For the updated version, we settled on using an angel as the character on the cover. The author found a couple images she liked (we cycled through a few before choosing these two), and got the advice of her fans before settling on the current model. Then I found an older image I’d taken of a bird with outstretched wings, did some inversions to the colors (this was actually the inner portion of the wings, rather than the outside shot), and put together the composite image. Of course, we also tried to stick with the same placement and feel of the other two covers.

Needless to say, I think I’ve improved a lot since I first started making book covers. Now, here’s the remake of Rebekkah Ford’s The Devil’s Third, a paranormal romance.

Before: