Cover Art: Doing it Right

[jimhines]

More authors are experimenting with electronic self-publishing these days. I want to point out two recent releases by friends of mine. Aerophilia, a short story by Tobias Buckell, and Fright Court, a serialized novel by Mindy Klasky.  Specifically, I want to point to the cover art.

Comments

[atdt1991]

With pressure-sensitive pen tablets available, I would say that the phrase "digital art" is a misnomer. If a professional is trying to make it look like a watercolor ... these days that is totally doable. Cut-outs and Illustrator graphics, on the other hand... that is often what people seem to mean by "digital art". Like "self-published" vs "amateur", it's just, IMO, a matter of semantics.

[jimhines]

Good point. A lot of tablet-drawn art is pretty damn awesome. I guess I'm thinking more of things like digitally rendered people and objects, which I used to see on a lot of the earlier e-books. That particular style just doesn't tend to work for me.

[beckyh2112]

That's because most people use crap-ass lighting and texturing, if I'm thinking of the same sort of thing you're thinking of. Like all types of art, it's possible to do some lovely stuff with it, if you know what you're doing.

[atdt1991]

That image totally reminds me of Accelerando by Stross.

[jimhines]

I do like that image, but when I look at some of the others in the artist's portfolio, they just don't work for me. Part of it might be an uncanny valley thing, I don't know.

[beckyh2112]

There is that. Art's not going to work for everyone. I tend to prefer Fredy for deliberately(?) going for "this is 3D" rather than trying to make them look super-realistic, myself. Some of the stuff intended to look very realistic gets really uncanny valley.

I think, though, that most of the books I've seen using this type of art for covers do suffer from bad lighting and poor texturing choices. Like, they just go with the defaults and don't even try to do some decent tweaking.

[atdt1991]

I understand what you mean, and I even agree. :D I hate to beat the point into the ground, but "digitally rendered people", again, equates to a vast range of styles, from the silhouettes on your LJ profile to Penny Arcade style to rotoscoping of actual photos to watercolor/oil/pencil/ink simulations.

Depending on the artistry of the person involved, you can't tell the difference. "Digital" is not the same as "obviously computer-generated", I believe.

[jimhines]

Nah, beat away. I think it also drives home the point that I'm very much an amateur here, and don't know the terminology as well as I'd like. But the fact that most writers are amateurs when it comes to visual art is part of my point, so that works for me :-)