Tag Archives: cover art

Behind the Scenes – Mira’s View

This is a cover for Melange Books.

For this cover, since the background was horizontal and worked well to wrap-around, I went ahead and created a wraparound background, rather than my usual basic background. This ended up using two different images for the elf… the face and head were one photo, to match the description of the character, and the body/outfit were another, to match the style of outfit requested on the art form. On the final image, since the hair was cut off at the edges on the original photo, I played with the smudging effects to create a more illustrated, fantastical look, and I also played with the softness of the background using Gaussian blur, Lens Blur, and overlay/soft light effects.

Here’s the end result. 🙂

Basic wrap-around, no spine or text on back cover:

SBibb - Mira's View - Wrap-around Book Cover

 

Front E-Book Cover:

SBibb - Mira's View - Book Cover

Stock images from Dreamstime:

http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photography-portrait-young-beautiful-woman-long-flowin-image24027857
http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-images-elf-image37703849
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-images-green-forest-mountain-view-top-some-villas-image32433154

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Behind the Scenes – Kragan

This is a cover for Melange Books.

SBibb - Kragan - Book Cover

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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Behind the Scenes – Roberto’s Return

This is a cover for Melange Books, the next in the T.J. Jackson Mysteries.

For this cover, the author already had a pretty good idea of what he wanted, and he even had images of the park he wanted used for the background. However, since it was a recognizable building, I did have the author check on the need for a property release. (Just like models, many buildings and areas require property releases. It’s a good idea to check before shooting in an area to see if you’ll need one). The author was able to get permission, and so we were able to proceed with that image.

I also ended up doing a bit of digital illustration (Photoshop CS6) to piece everything together. Since we wanted a very specific pose, and the author had the outfit necessary, he had a friend model for him and shoot the image, and then I picked out the stock images of the man’s head to best fit the character. I added in a different sky, since we wanted sunset, and we tried to mimic the baseball text for the title itself.

Side note: Since most of these covers have been revealed by the time I post them, and since I usually try to post behind the scenes information when I reveal the covers on my blog, I’m going to start calling these posts “Behind the Scenes” instead of “Cover Reveal.” Sorry for any confusion. 🙂

SBibb - Roberto's Return - Book Cover

Stock Photos from Dreamstime:

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-afroammerican-businessman-points-finger-up-image29241340
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-sunset-sky-image24432770

All other images provided by author. Photograph of Doubleday Field used with permission.

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The Feast of Yule – Cover Reveal

This  was a cover that managed to come together really easily. In this case, the author requested that there be a gnome on the cover if possible, and if we could get an autumn background, that’d be good, too. Mentioned that the gnomes were mischievous and at one point had axes in the story. So I went browsing through Dreamstime looking for images of gnomes. I didn’t find a gnome, per say… but three images later, I’d say that gnome looks mischevious, don’t you?

Sometimes a cover can be amazingly simple to put together. This was one of them. Also, I kept the same sort of title treatment to help it tie into her other story, Forgetting Fallenwood. 🙂

SBibb - The Feast of Yule Book Cover

Stock Photography from Dreamstime:

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Cover Reveal – Freeing Abigail

This is another cover for Melange Books.

SBibb - Freeing Abigail Cover

This is another example of how using a single photo can work for a cover. It’s something I’ve seen more prominent in romance/contemporary works. For this, I used ( http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photography-loving-young-sensual-couple-champagne-bed-image17978822 ) from Dreamstime. This is also a case where the author requested a specific photo. We worked through several potential images before finally deciding on this one, and I changed the hair color of both models to fit the characters, along with fading the image and applying filters and blurring effects to get the final cover image.

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Lightpoints – Cover Creation Process

Just thought I’d mention that Peter Kassan, the author of Lightpoints (I did the cover) has recently posted a blog post about the cover creation process. Thought others might be interested. 🙂

Read about the process here: http://peterkassan.com/2013/03/blog/

 

SBibb - Lightpoints Cover

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An Age of Mist – Cover Reveal

SBibb - An Age of Mist Cover

 

This is another cover I did for Melange Books. 🙂

Stock from Dreamstime:

http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photography-serious-preteen-boy-image21381697
http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-images-misty-fjords-national-monument-alaska-usa-image780119

All other images are my own. Photoshop CS6 and Lightroom 4.0.

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Cover Reveal – Lightpoints

SBibb  - Lightpoints Cover

 

New cover for Melange Books. The author was friendly to work with, too. 🙂

Photoshop CS6 and Lightroom 4.0

Stock used: http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photo-young-lady-sunny-cityscape-image9151825

http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-images-george-street-sydney-city-image18813469

All other images and artwork (putting in the individual light points) are my own. 🙂

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Book Cover Reveal – Forgetting Fallenwood

SBibb - Forgetting Fallenwood Cover

This is another cover I did for Melange Books. It’s for a fantasy novel. Photoshop CS6 and Lightroom 4.0. All the images except for the woman and the fence (From Dreamstime: http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photography-business-woman-disposable-coffee-image11631967 ) are my own.

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Cover Reveal – The Devil’s Blues

SBibb -The Devil's Blues Cover

This is a wrap-around book cover I recently completed for Barking Rain Press. It’s for a mystery crime novel. It’s not yet released, but you can find out more about it here: [link]

Note: All of these images are from Shutterstock. Normally I’d use my own images, but in this case, stock images worked out best for what we wanted.

Photoshop CS6. 🙂

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