Tag Archives: Erin Elliott

May 6, 2015 · 7:00 am

Behind the Scenes – Mira’s Last

A cover for Melange Books. This is the third in The Sword of Lumina series. (See the previous covers: Mira’s View and Mira’s Hope ). Though I used a similar model for the face, I was able to find a working image of the same model for the body, then made sure the style of the covers matched the complete series. The title placement remained the same, while the mood of each cover was matched to the mood of the particular book.

Stock images from Dreamstime:

http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photography-elf-beautiful-gray-background-image37782997

http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photography-portrait-beautiful-woman-image14803877

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photography-old-rusted-broadsword-image24282162

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-sunset-beach-image679100

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-images-spooky-castle-image14970564

Behind the Scenes – Mira’s Hope

This is the cover for the sequel to Mira’s View, from Melange Books.

For this cover, I wanted to keep the same style as the first, with the prominent characters and soft background, as well as the text placement. I added in the snow (see the link at the bottom of this post for the tutorial I referenced) to bring everything together and add extra “oomph.” We experimented with a couple different backgrounds before choosing this one. I also included a second character who plays a large role in the story, and considered bringing in a third character, except that I worried the cover would look busy. I was able to use the same models (Yes, plural. Body and head were different, so as to fit the character description) for the female character, though I did use different stock images of them to help keep the covers varied. It’s the benefit to using Dreamtime’s “Other Stock Images With This Model” link when searching for suitable images. We also included a logline, provided by the author, to help create interest in the story. This is the result:

Stock images from Dreamstime:

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-image-elf-image37703101
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-image-portrait-young-beautiful-woman-long-flowin-image24770171
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photography-old-rusted-broadsword-image24282162

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photography-snow-winter-wood-image13044892

http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-image-man-long-hair-sword-down-holding-to-his-serious-expression-his-face-image36385946
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-image-attractive-young-man-long-hair-image23350511

Useful snow tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0-4p_65vxQ

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: