Covers

[Christopher]

I would guess that the increasing use of covers with ships and stations and cityscapes and the like is due at least partly to the success of the Ships of the Line calendar series.

 

[Sci]

It's also much more time consuming to draw people ... it's "easier" to take a starship, put it into some fancy background.

But I've noticed that the last two Voyager-covers lack inspiration. It's just a starship and a vancy background. Nothing's happening.

If you're referring to Unworthy and Full Circle, I disagree. I thought that both have an interesting sense of loneliness and strength to them -- an emotional context that I found lacking in all previous VOY covers, most of which were generic "floating head against a gas bubble or outer space background."

 

[Tino]

As for the ship just sitting there with a nice background... What do you want to see?

More drama or interesting angels, I guess. I loved the cover of DO COMETS DREAM. That really was something to look at.
I'm not saying that the covers are ugly ... just a little straight forward, shall we say?

I'm sure there are plenty of people over in the Trek Art forum who would aggressively disagree. (...) Computers resist realism.

That's quite true ... it does take a lot of time.

I was more thinking about the process ... when you paint five people on the cover and editorial decision make you replace them or put them somewhere else ... that probably takes more time than replacing the background in a CGI-picture (the redefining and lighting nonetheless being a painful job).

I actually did like the style of "Losing the Peace". That had a lot of drama in it (not to mention some mistakes in perspective, people's proportion and swopped nacelles). I had a good photo realism to it, too.

The first four Voy-R books by Christie Golden featured Janeway, Seven, Chakotay (with Sekaya) and then Tom all on their own covers.

The first two were a little boring ... but I kinda liked the other two. But I understand that covers with the actual starships might sell better because they're better recognizable.

But to me, the novels are about the people and not the ships.


So I guess I just prefer them. But that's just me and I wasn't trying to badmouth any cover artist in here.

 

[EmperorKalan]

I would guess that the increasing use of covers with ships and stations and cityscapes and the like is due at least partly to the success of the Ships of the Line calendar series.

Speaking of which, Doug Drexler has his cover for David Mack's Vanguard: Precipice up on his blog:
http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2009/08/30/vanguard-precipice/