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- Thread starter Jarrod
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Ironic that you asked that in response to the very person who wrote that novel...
The last Rise of the Federation book cover is just an absolute mess IMO. The background isn't bad, but Trip is very obviously photoshopped, and the red tinting just looks weird.
On the third Prey book's cover, is the way Worf is peeking through the other Klingon's Bat'leth just looks weird to me. I'm still not quite sure what exactly the devil on the second book's cover is meant to represent.
That is much better.The German Prey covers are among my favorites of all my books. Still need to get the actual copies!
The Buried Age, which is an amazing book, is part of The Lost Era, not The Lost Years. The Lost Years was the miniseries that covered the time between The Original Series and The Motion Picture, The Lost Era covered the time between The Undiscovered Country and TNG.
Sorry, I see people do this all the time and it's become one of my big pet peeves with Trek Lit, along with people calling the Typhon Pact the Typhoon Pact.
Yeah, Trips photoshopping wasn't the best. I guess the red tint had to do with Section 31, perhaps.
The devil-like picture was curious. I suppose it was supposed to represent the bad guys trying to take over the Empire, but it was more related to ambition, not because someone was summoning evil forces. The first Prey book's cover was ok though.
M
marlboro
Guest
I'm not very good with Photoshop, so I usually end up spending more time trying to (futilely) cover up my obvious lack of skill than I do actually putting the image together. For example, tinting the image is a quick and dirty way of masking the fact that I don't know anything about the proper use of light and shadow.
Again, I'm certainly not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but many of the Trek novel covers are either done by someone with little skill or by someone who just doesn't want to devote the time to doing the job right.
How did we wind up getting so many novels in the the 2010s with plain face shots, 1 dominant color, and almost no background (almost all Typhon Pact, A Choice of Futures, sort of Cold Equations) Like seriously, who thought that was a good idea? Or was Pocket running so low on budget they were hoping no one would notice?
We also got quite a few ship covers over the past 10 years.
I do like the first Prey book's cover, I just wish the other two matched it's quality.
And some of those were preexisting images from the Ships of the Line calendars.
One would hope that Doug Drexler would know more about this kind of thing than that...
M
marlboro
Guest
No doubt the man is very talented, but that Hall of Heroes cover is like staring into the Ark of the Covenant.
Just to be clear, there are a lot of great looking Trek covers out there. These guys are light years ahead of my skill level. But there are some covers that look rushed or just half-assed.
Dayton Ward speculated on his website that the reason that the German covers look so much better may be because the artists have more time to work on them than there American counterparts. I think that there is probably a lot of truth to that. So, I can excuse them not looking like masterpieces. That still doesn't explain why some of them look so rough. I would guess that 90 percent of the covers that don't involve creating new 3D rendered images can be done in a few hours at most.
I mentioned recently that I thought Alan Dingman had a hand in creating some great looking covers. He's had a couple of duds, but I think he's good. Here is one of his covers:
Now, I want to reiterate that I am no artist, and I suck at Photoshop, but anyone who even knows the basics of the program could recreate this image in less than an hour.
You have three main layers here.
1) A stock profile pic of Spock. If you haven't done so already, you would need to add an alpha channel and then cut Spock away from the rest of the image. Then tint the image to the color of your choice. The type of tinting used here is as easy as sliding a bar with a pointer. This should take 10 minutes at most.
2) The cg ruins. These may be the same renderings he used in A Choice of Catastrophes. Just a different POV. If so, you would just need to desaturate the image and tinker with the contrast and levels until you get what you're looking for. Another 5 minutes worth of work.
3) You don't have to have a layer for the swirling background, but it would be much easier if you do. Probably just experiment with your brushes until you find the texture you want. Dab away. 10 minutes.
Merge your layers. Maybe use a blur tool to make sure the layers mesh smoothly. At this point I'd probably spend some time experimenting and tweaking. If you were satisfied, you would probably need less than 5 minutes to make it look decent.
All that's left is to add your logo and text. The logo is probably already saved as a png or something, so you'd just drop it in. The text for the title and author's name is pretty generic. Just create 2 text layers, choose your font and adjust till you're satisfied. Maybe 10 minutes here if you're indecisive.
Save your file in a lossless format and that's all she wrote.
I don't think the cover above is bad or anything, or that a cover must be the product of days of toil, I just wanted to illustrate how quickly some of them could be produced.
Another thing I dislike about some Trek covers is how undistinguished they are. There are a lot of them that just aren't eyecatching. I think this happens because, one, the artists may only have a general idea about what the book is about and, two, having a stock image of a popular character may sell more books than a beautiful cover. Still, I wish they would employ a little more creativity.
Author: My book is about Spock and Bones being besieged by giant six legged man eating leeches after getting trapped on a Hellish swamp planet!
Artist: Great! Here's a pic of the Enterprise floating lazily in a generic starfield.
I like most of the ship covers, except Unworthy. Architects of Infinity is my favorite. And of course there are the German covers with characters and dominated by the colors red and blue.
Personally, I like a face and a ship together on a cover, with a bit of inspired composition. It's the latter that we don't really get a lot of. Anyway, I don't know if this opinion is unpopular, but I'm not a fan of Doug Drexler's CG work (3d modeling and photoshop), especially in the covers...it's a bit dated. HUGE fan of his 2D design and concept work, but it his execution with those designs in 3D always seems either flat or cartooney to me.
To be honest I’m not that bothered about the covers; it’s what’s between the covers that matters.
That's what she said.
..lol. On that note, I don't actually own any physical copies of any of these books, so I don't even have the covers aside from the ebooks which just appear as thumbnails anyway.
A side of Christopher I’ve never seen in all these years.
It's more about my inability to resist a pun than anything else.
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