Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
I found this thread last December when I discovered DAZ3D and realized I could use it to design book covers. I had tried to work with a cover designer on another book who did not understand what I wanted. Being a techie, I decided to try it. It took me a while, but I finally have a cover that I love! This is the prequel to Black Kat, a dark romantic comedy series with superheroes. It's done almost entirely with DAZ3D products. Still learning Iray but happy with how this one came out. The book will be free on Amazon next week if anyone is interested.
Nicely done cover.
This is your first cover? WOW. You knocked this one out of the park. This is very professional. I love the classic composition with her framed against the moon. The hair and shine on her outfi are really nicely done. And the bit of the city showing in the background is a nice touch. The text is fantastic. I love the title and subtitle -- and great use of fog at the bottom to promote legibility. QUESTION: Did you experiment with plain text for the author names? I usually don't like beveled text on small typefaces like the author names, and this on is just at the limit of being big enough to make it work. It does work, but I'm worried that it might not when it is reduced to a thumbnail. This is a minor thought, though. I'm SUPER impressed. WELL DONE and good luck with the series.
Please remind us next week when it's available -- I'll take a look at it on my Kindle Fire and let you know how it looks (and what I think of the book itself).
Thanks! Yes, MMitchell- that was the one thing that really dogged me, that darned text for the author names and the misfortune tag. I still don't feel they're quite right. Just finding the right font to compliment the title was a challenge (and I'm not sure I found it.) The title font is Abaddon, which I love. I guess there's a lot of art and science that goes into font pairing that I don't know about yet. I have twelve more books in this series, so plenty of time to get it right and stick with it. Using DAZ3D for it is so much fun! There's no way I could bring half of my "Supers" to life with it!
I'll be happy to remind you all next week. Thanks so much for the encouragement and support!
Kim :)
PS. I made sure to put the products I used on this image in my gallery post. Will be posting the info on my website at some point too.
Llnara: You nailed it with the Abaddon font (one of my faves, too). I like the "Misfortune" tag. It's clean and simple, which is really nice next to the other, more elaborate fonts. And I will most certainly check your gallery and the product listings -- I personally LOVE IT when an artist takes the time to list all the elements that go into a piece. :-)
Thanks so much! What really made a huge difference was Dimension Theory's Iradiance HDRI Light Probes. Wow, those are magical. I found one that casts a teal light, then did a hue adjustment layer in Photoshop on the background to match (it's Magix 101's Iray Skydome Superpak- Gothic Moon, I think.) I actually had a different Kat ready to go when Belladizines came out with that gorgeous Esther model! That's part of the fun of the design process- seeing what the PA's cook up next!
That's a great looking cover! :) It does look very professional. Well done! Yeah, remind us next week and I'll be sure to download it. I'd be interested to see how the cover does in my paperwhite, too. I think it will do great. Some covers, unfortunately, don't do as well in the greyscale that paperwhite uses. I've seen some that have sections just fade into the background. I think yours will do nicely, though.
Thanks, Knittingmommy! You know, I studied other covers in my genre and color scheme, thinking it needed more color in the fonts, and discovered that anything other than these colors took away from Kat's face, which I didn't want. I ended up sticking with a very tight color scheme, which will hopefully translate well to black and white. The color issue was a big surprise! Dreamworks has a very good tutorial on book covers in the DAZ store, and I remember Val talking about image-dominated covers, text-dominated, and mixed. Seems like image-dominated covers need very minimal text colors to avoid that distraction. At least that was my experience with this one.
Llynara, I like the cover, too. I wonder, though, if the text is overdone. It's an ornate typeface, coupled with an overbearing (3D effect) Photoshop style. Together, they make the text harder to read. If you haven't already, you might want to downsize the cover to traditional Amazon thumbnail, and post that. Fresh eyes can help if the text treatment needs a relook -- you already know what it says, but for others, the gothic font might prove hard to read at thumbnail size -- C's that look like T's, U's that look like Vs, and so on.
I always suggest simple white text (possibily with a stroke or slight drop shadow if you must) when coupled with a highly decorative font. For me, it's an either/or: either a decorative font and very selective use of PS styles, or vice versa. At the risk of sounding too critical, which is not my intention, my first reaction to covers like this is "They have Photoshop!" There are certainly plenty of Kindle and paperback titles that use effects like this, but I think simpler is better. For example, here's a reasonably good selling title in gothic romance that uses a distinctive typeface for the title, but integrates the text using non-"canned" PS styles (I simply picked this one at random):
https://www.amazon.com/Miramonts-Ghost-Elizabeth-Hall-ebook/dp/B00LTBWMJ6/ref=zg_bs_10159332011_12
While you appeared to use two fonts, there are actually four distinct treatments, and there's a risk of it looking jumbled. The main and series titles are both in the same face, but different sizes (which is okay in and of itself, though the series name somewhat competes with the title). You then have another font for the subtitle and author names, but use distinct different styles for each of these.
Simply as a suggestion, you might try using the gothic font for just the title, playing with simpler style effects. Choose a non-decorative font for the series title, subtitle, and authors. Here you can play with suitable variations between the elements if you wish.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0380730405
But again, it's a very nice cover as-is.
Thanks, Tobor. I think at that size, it probably does look like too much, but the thumbnails on my Amazon page look pretty good. I will take a look at your suggestions and see if I can make it look better. I actually struggled with the fonts way more than the images, which surprised me.
Here's the one off my Amazon page:
I have that tutorial! :) I'm still working my way through it. There is some good advice in there. I think with your color choices and the framing you have with the moon, it will do fine. I'll let you know what I find when I download it next week, but I'm thinking your cover won't be a problem on the paperwhite.
edit: Oh, I just now see that it is in Kindle Unlimited. I'll see about downloading tomorrow as soon as I finish my current read and can add it to my Unlimited list. I'll let you know how it looks on the paperwhite tomorrow.
The type is the harder thing to get right. The picture can be some abstract painting that means next to nothing, but for online selling on venues, it's the text that will get the reader to click.
The thumbnail sizes to be concerned with are 160 x 102 and 150 x 97 (or thereabouts), which are the size sAmazon uses in its category and other listings.
One thing I wouldn't change much is the colors of the text. The cover is essentially a duotone with some highlights, except for her face. The rich colors there pulls the eye to the face, and adds a lot of interest. That plus having her head framed by the moon the way you have it makes this a pro cover.
Typeography is actually a combination of art and technology (i.e. applied science). There are a lot of rules and reasons for why some things look better than others. I, for one, do not mind at all the ornate type on the larger title. Simplifying the series title might be a good idea, though. And I already mentioned my comments about the author names. My one suggestion for the tagline would be to increase the spacing between the letters -- not the horizontal width, but the actual space (kerning) between the letters themselves. That would improve legibility at the smaller sizes. And, although I usually concur with Tobor about 95% of the time, this time I suggest that you do not abandon Abaddon. The font is good, and if you start messing with it this close to deadline, you could fall down a rabbit hole and waste time on it that could be better spent elsewhere.
Some questions for all:
When you start with a cover design, do you sketch it out on paper first?
If so, when you are finished with the final product, how close does your final product match the sketch?
All good points, Tobor and MMitchell! I will play a little over the weekend. The author names are the ones really bugging me the most. I love Abaddon too and would like to keep that. I'll try some different options out for simplifying the styling and post later this weekend. Thanks so much for everyone's input!
I start with an image in my head and look on Google and Amazon for something similar, studying poses, fonts, etc. The one above was the result of a lot of tinkering and playing. She was originally standing, centered, and it didn't look right. I added her to the side, it was better, but it was when I had her crouching down that it all came together. I haven't really developed a solid workflow/process yet, still very new to it!
As a note, it's not the font itself, but the use of a highly decorative font (especially one with unusual glyphs) coupled with the Photoshop style treatment. Given the dominant size of the title on the cover, the combination is rather over-powering.
This font, or variations of it, has been used in a variety of mainstream posters and covers, including Disney's Maleficent. For their artwork they modified the glyphs to be slightly lightwer wight, reformed some of the points,, and for the style, rendered it in a full photorealistic metal chrome. It works pretty well, though all of the letters they used are fairly standard roman glyphs.
http://images6.fanpop.com/image/photos/36900000/Maleficent-New-Poster-disney-princess-36955441-2899-1446.jpg
If you're headed toward a deadline, I'd personally just leave the main title, and concentrate on the author names and subtitle. Because there are two authors, you might consider a small graphic break between the names. Maybe you could use a variation of the starpoint brush that appears elsewhere.
I start by copying other people!
Seriously, I have a trove of maybe 2,000 covers collected over the years from various sources. On some, it might just be the background treatment; on others it's text treatment, something I like about the overall design, or whatever. I'm a fan of the old pulp styles -- the masters like Robert McGinnis, James Meese, Earle Bergey, Paul Rader, etc -- so I have a lot of examples of these that I go through for inspiration. In the end, my version and the sources bear little resemblence, but there are similarities in the compositional elements. Maybe it's a pose from one, title treatment from another, and background from a third.
I don't do full renders, and everything is a composite in Photoshop, so I just sit back and move things around until I like the result. I might have a general look in mind, but it's mostly extemporaneous. I think sketching is particularly useful in traditional art, because once commited to paper or canvas, it's hard to move it around. But (for me) a pre-viz sketch has less application in digital, where things are so fluid anyway.
Definitely interested! Love to read and this sounds like its right up my alley.
Most of the old-time comic artists I know call that their "Swipe File." I used to keep a very extensive swipe file, but these days I just start fresh with Google and browse for inspiration. And, like you, I always render everything in pieces so I can manipulate them individually. This is particularly useful for things like spacing and text placement.
To answer my own question, though, I do often start with a paper sketch at exactly the printed size. I do it to get a very rough idea of how the image will look in relation to the text. I used to do tighter sketches (and sometimes still do), but these are very rough and capture the idea of the moment so that I won't lose it later. There might be weeks, months or years between an idea and actual execution. The sketch gives me somewhere to start when I actually sit down and get ready to work. And, very often, the final design has nothing to do with the original idea -- or it might just contain an germ of the original design idea.
Love the swipe file idea and glad to hear other people collect covers. I collect all kinds of inspiration for characters but also stuff for covers. My picture folders and my Evernote overfloweth! I think I have well over 100 notebooks in Evernote dedicated to book notes, and many snippets of character and book cover pics in there too. I get a ton of character ideas here at DAZ. Love the versatility and the variety offered.
Thank you for all the great suggestions on my cover, Tobor and Mmitchell! Here is my final version of the cover.
I increased the tracking (the kerning seemed to be stuck), took off the emboss and bevel on the author text, adjusted the color and added the star between the names (it's from Ron's Angeldust brush set, which is surprisingly versatile.) The new cover should show up on my Amazon page in a couple of hours, here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M4G83ZG
The free promo is Oct 20-22 (Thurs-Sat.) Please help yourself to a free copy! And if you like it, please leave a review. They are like gold to indie authors.
@Llynara late to the party
It's a great cover and congrats on the work 
I looked at your Amazon page and your earlier work (if i didn't misidentify you 
) is also very good: it looks like a scene from a movie.
Tobor and Mmitchell have the text pretty well covered; I let my Art Director take care of that and the layouts: with more than 20 years of experience as an AD/Graphic Designer, it wouldn't make sense not make use of that
That he's also a really good friend is is a huge bonus 
If there's any observation I might make for future reference, I really love the lighting on her face: it has "lovely modeling" as my camera department tutors used to say in film school
Whatever you're doing keep it up and if I had to hazard a guess it looks like Butterfly lighting; if it worked for Avedon... 
The hard highlights on the makes it look like pleather while the more "wrapped" quality on the boots makes it look like leather; not sure if that makes sense
Organic material tends to absorb and scatter light while inorganic surface ends to reflect it. The programmers/animators who made use Subsurface Scattering to create Dobie and Gollum won richly deserved Oscars: the skin of the characters still looks amazing even today.
I'm not a big Iray user but in Reality I set the glossiness of the cowl and catsuit to 8500 out of 10000 to get slightly diffused highlights. Here's an example of a test:
Once again, beautiful cover and welcome to the thread!
Thanks, 3DLux! My first book, Crazy in the Heart, was done by a friend after I tried to work with an award winning cover artist who could not figure out what I wanted. She only wanted to use stock photos and we couldn't find anyone who looked like my hero. So my friend created him from Michael 4 in DAZ and that's what brought me here in the first place. I was like, "What the heck is a Michael 4 and why do I need to know that?"
Turns out, I have plenty of reasons- lots of books to write, and I love creating my own stuff. I'd rather spend the money on 3D stuff and learn to do the covers myself. Plus I can do promo art. I am just beginning to get the hang of Iray and will probably redo Crazy in the Heart's cover when I release my next Midwest book. I have some of the 3Delight stuff for the Black Kat series here, still working on the website: http://www.blackkatseries.com/
The lighting I used for Unlucky Charm, believe it or not, was Dimension Theory's Iradiance soft light probes. I can't remember which one, it's got a teal tinge to it, but I'll check when I get home and post. I did boost the exposure and tweak the colors a little in Adobe Lightroom, which seemed to help too. I am amazed at what you can do in that program.
The "Pleather" is a happy accident. There are jokes about her cheap costume and where she got it from. (She gets a better one in the next book.) The boots are from a different set (DX30 Flat Heeled Boots.)
And holy cow, the pic you posted is GORGEOUS! Love, love, love it! It looks so real! I have Reality but bought it when I was a total n00b to Daz and couldn't figure it out. I'm still a n00b but learning. Maybe I'll tinker with it again, in that non-existent free time, LOL
Impressive Catwoman
I hesitate to link to this, considering the quality of the images shown, but ... a friend who writes has inpsired me to do a few images based on his short stories, and he has had inspiration from a few of my images to write short stories. For this years WynterCon (held a few weeks ago in Eastbourne) the results of a strange conversation we had around six months ago was released onto the world: Walking Home - it looks a bit darker than it really is, honest!
Sent a PM, FirstBastion
Thanks for the tip about your lighting, Llynara; looks like I need to save for DimensionTheory's Light Probes and wait for a sale
And I should take a look at Lightroom 
I just bought Unlucky Charm
Yes, I know about the promo (my author does that too) but it's always good to support up and coming writers 
I also bought the first ebook of the space opera series I did the cover for, for that very reason; she sent me an autographed hard copy and I'm keeping that pristine 
And here's a link to some free sIBLs; the one I used is Old Industrial Hall
To tell the truth, I first conceptualized the piece 3 years ago, but was never able to make it work. When a new cat and catwoman coincedentally came out on different sites I decided to revisit it and after half a day using the old layout decided to start over when a lightbulb went off and I realized I needed to treat it live a love scene instead of a cat and its owner 
And I lucked out with Reality because even though I found it a few months after I started Daz in 2012, what I had learned in Film School and as a Lighting Cameraman was transferable
That said, it's only now that I'm really starting to get my head around skin, which is the most complex material, imho 
And sIBLs are great not only for exterior shots but the light they give off is incredibly complex and "real" (and they can be made invisble anyways if a background is not wanted
)
--Jaime
Jamie,
Thanks so much for all the great tips and for buying my book! I appreciate the encouragement, and would be happy to send you an autographed copy if you like, once the print version is out. Hoping to do an audio book too. I actually have the skill set for that (I was in broadcasting and theater) but not the time. Will probably put it up on ACX and look for a good voice actor for it soon. Whoever does it will have fun with the accents. I have a very diverse group of Supers.
My problem is I want to do everything and there's never enough time or resources. I have entire movie promos of this stuff in my head (I can't do animation, YET!), and now there's that wonderful LineRender 9000 out, and I think how cool it would be to do some graphic novel art. OMG, somebody stop me! LOL! Too many ideas and toys, not enough time.
I will definitely check out those sIBLs. I've been to that site before and downloaded one or two, but haven't used them much because I was still blundering my way through DAZ (still am! LOL)
I love how you treated that scene as a love scene. The emotion comes across very well. The textures and the lighting are just amazing. Do you have a gallery here? Would love to see you other work with Reality and these lights.
EDIT: I found your Deviant Art gallery. Love the Les Miserables renders! (and I've spent time in South Korea too, not recently though.)
Kim :)
PS. I checked the lighting I used in the book cover. It's from the iRadiance Expansion Set 1 here: http://www.daz3d.com/iradiance-light-probe-hdr-lighting-for-iray-expansion-1
The exact light is: DTLP2-LightProbe01-Direct.hdr (screenshot attached)
I have to say that I use DimensionTheory's iRadience Light Probes a lot as well! I find them invaluable and use them alone or combined with other lights. They are definitely worth the effort of saving for them.
@3dlux I like how you did your catwoman, too. Very nice! :)
Ohh an Audio book would be awesome, especially if it gets published at Audible ......And I hope you get Tavia Gilbert as a voice actor.