Today in our On Writing series I wanted to talk about cover art.
We will use the cover for grydscaen: dissonance the new book in the series which I drew as the example and also talk about commissioning artists for covers as well. So you might say this is sort of a cover reveal even though this is just the line art before it gets coloured.
Cover Illustration: Commissioning an Artist
First lets talk about finding an artist. You can go to forums like “Deviant Art” which is an artist community or also the Facebook forum “Connecting Comic Book Artist and Writers” or you can use sites like Fivrr or Upworks to commission an artist. I have my own artwork up on Deviant Art so I am familiar with that community and I have used Upworks before for other things but not cover art. I have never used Fivrr but some other authors have. I have used the Facebook forum but I have had mixed reviews with that.
If you commission an artist to do your covers you will need to pay them the commission rate which can run for a black and white pencil drawing anywhere from $40-$100. Inked can range from $60-$180 or higher and coloured can be even higher than that. Again you might want to audition your artist as well to ensure that they have the right look for your work. Look at the work and make sure it fits your medium/thoughts/story. I have seen some excellent covers for some books. Most fantasy and science fiction books may have illustrations on the covers.
You can also do photo composite covers. These are popular for MM Romance and Paranormal. I personally think some of those collage covers are silly and look Photoshopped especially if there are werewolves on the cover with a half naked guy. Your cover is your first impression so you want to make it good.
When you find your artist if you are lucky they will actually read your book and find out about your story before proposing an illustration. If not you want to have an idea in your head so that you can relay that to your artist. If you have a rough sketch of the layout that can also help. Remember a cover artist may just do the illustration instead of laying out the whole cover for you. Know what you are getting into before you start. You may get the artwork and then have to format the cover front and back yourself. Some authors do this.
Have an idea in your head of what you want the cover to look like so that you give the artist a basic idea of what you want. Having your own sketch even if it is rudimentary can give the cover artist a guideline.
Give your artist a deadline and remember to get a contract. I had an artist backout on me after some good work happening I think because life got in the way. I don’t fault the artist in any means but make sure to protect yourself. In this case I had paid the artist $90 for two drawings and in the end I am out that money with no final drawings. Make sure you have an agreement up front with the artist.
grydscaen covers: Do it Yourself
So I do all the artwork for the grydscaen covers. I usually pick an image that would describe something that happens in that particular book. For the grydscaen: dissonance book I chose the character Natsuki a 12 year old child soldier from Shalany. The image includes Natsuki hiding behind a wall with a rifle. This is unique to have a girl on the cover of a grydscaen novel so I wanted to do something new for this book.
Once I pick the character I set out to draw the image. The specific scene in the short story with Natsuki has her hiding out before the Jannai soldiers from the Atlantea Federation attack. Since this is an actual scene in the book the reader will get a feeling for it before the story starts by seeing the cover.
I had one go at this drawing. I didn’t need to attempt it multiple times. It was drawn with .5 mechanical pencil on 8.5×11 copy paper. Once the pencil drawing was completed it was scanned into my Mac computer and then transferred to thumb drive and moved to my other PC which has Photoshop 6 on it. I took the drawing into Photoshop and changed the levels so it was darker and adjusted the hue so the lines really stood out and looked inked since the scanner scans light with the pencil.
Once scanned I crop the drawing. In this case for the way the cover layout will be I had to crop the wall. All grydscaen covers are drawn by me so this was within the same vein as the others. A few of the grydscaen covers will feature two people but most of the time they feature one person. This is true for dissonance. The key difference with this cover is that there are walls or background in the scene.
figure: grydscaen: dissonance cover lineart
Once the levels are set and the drawing is darker, it is coloured using Photoshop. This can be done on a Wacom tablet or other pen-computer device or just in Photoshop with layers. For me when I colour something I label all the layers differently so that I can keep track what is on a layer. I make sure to write out the instructions for colouring the image. In the Natsuki image there are her clothes, the walls, the rifle and a necklace that all need to be coloured. There is a highlight colour on all the grydscaen books and a fade to black that needs to be applied to the image. The highlight colour which will display the book’s subtitle and the rectangle for the author name will also have the highlight burst fade to black on the image.
Once the image is coloured it is put into the template for the front/back cover. There is a definite style and design to all the novels in the grydscaen series. The short stories are different but the novels have the same look and feel. The word “grydscaen” is always white on the black cover in a specific font and vertical position. The layout of each book is similar so the placement of the words on the front cover are in the same positions, the words just change for each subtitle. The back cover also has a similar layout. There was a slight change starting in volume 3 which will carry on to the later books.
The coloured drawing is incorporated into the front cover layout using InDesign to do the layout with all the appropriate pieces. This includes the spine wording as well. The entire file is sized prior to creating to fit the book. There will be no print version of grydscaen: dissonance so we will only be getting a sized ebook file. The file is then exported to PDF which I will then review with the galley of the internal of the book as well. The specific ebook template is used to layout the inside of the book.
Now after I decided on ebook only for this book I had a little change of heart and thought about also getting a print layout. I went back and forth on this because all the other grydscaen novels have a print version although the print version of grydscaen: retribution is no longer available. So for now I am good with ebook only but this might change and I will have to go back to my publisher and see if we can add that one if I change my mind.
Since I do all the illustrations for grydscaen book covers and don’t need to rely on someone else’s vision of my cover I always know what I am getting. It is just down to my ability to execute the image. So far I think I have been successful. There is one of the future books which has a cover which I might want to redrawn but at the moment I am living with it.
So this is my process for making a grydscaen cover. We will do a full cover reveal when the cover galley is ready and we will continue following the progress of grydscaen: dissonance as it goes through the entire production process to launch.