Gaussian blur | Stephanie Flint

Another cover for Melange Books.

For this one, I wanted to convey the idea that the man is the siren, and so I used the fish scale texture and a sort of rippling texture (a slightly Gaussian blurred image of quartz) to hint at the idea of the ocean. The author requested the gold and red tones, and mentioned that the siren works at a theatre, so I played with those colors and the background to give the cover a richer, classy feel. While I usually peruse Dreamstime for stock images, for this one, I looked through the images that Melange Books had purchased earlier during their stock subscription to see if anything matched.

This is the end result:

Stock images from Dreamstime:

http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photos-young-guy-long-hair-naked-image23337038
http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photos-gothic-castle-interior-image9182498
http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-image-rose-quartz-vertical-image858416
http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photos-skin-blue-siamese-fighting-fish-image7645918

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: