DS9 - Enigma Tales by Una McCormack pre-release thread

[Burning Hearts of Qo'nos]

I actually like seeing ships on the covers too, but they often get used in really boring ways. Also something that drives me a little batty is every time DS9-2 is on the covers, the scaling is so boring looking. It never looks like a MASSIVE space station with the vanilla camera angles they use.

I think the best combination is single character plus a shot of a ship/station or space element like a planet or something.

 

[Hardtarget]

I actually like seeing ships on the covers too, but they often get used in really boring ways. Also something that drives me a little batty is every time DS9-2 is on the covers, the scaling is so boring looking. It never looks like a MASSIVE space station with the vanilla camera angles they use.

I think the best combination is single character plus a shot of a ship/station or space element like a planet or something.

A bit off topic but I believe there has been one "ok" use of the scale of nuDS9:

The new station looks awful in the cover to DS9: Ascendance though, that's for sure. and in Sacraments of Fire it looks fine but it's completely alone on the cover so you can't tell scale in any way sadly.

 

[Burning Hearts of Qo'nos]

A bit off topic but I believe there has been one "ok" use of the scale of nuDS9:

The new station looks awful in the cover to DS9: Ascendance though, that's for sure. and in Sacraments of Fire it looks fine but it's completely alone on the cover so you can't tell scale in any way sadly.

While the composition and shapes are pretty pleasing to the eye here, I still don't really feel like it conveys a real sense of scale with the single point perspective. In this shot, I would have tried to bring the camera lower and tilted up towards the Robinson and DS9 creating two point perspective so distance will look like it stretches in two directions. Then get closer to the Robinson and showing more detail and presence, the ship itself would seem bigger making the station behind it seem more massive, with a few ships in the far background. Then you get scale at all distances within frame.

As presented through the camera angles, textures, and lighting, these look like toys set up in a diorama.

Or imagine a shot from the core facing outwards where you can see the park in frame behind the glass (off to the side) and then the pylons extending out into the far distance and then climbing to the top. These kind of shots I feel would give more scale.

 

[David cgc]

A bit off topic but I believe there has been one "ok" use of the scale of nuDS9.

Oddly enough, compared to the design sketches, it looks like it's about twice as big as it should be in that picture.

 

[Burning Hearts of Qo'nos]

Well this just throws my view of everything into question.

 

[JD]

@Jinn please do not think ill of me but I went and made a cover too... it seemed like fun! However, I tried to make one that looks nice in full spite of how lazy the cover we're getting is! I, for one, am so saddened by ugly or lazy book covers (despite the fact I don't buy physical books, but still, its principle). The fact that they will put a face on new clothes for these covers drives me crazy...not because it looks bad or anything (but sometimes it so does), but that it actually takes TIME to do something like that. It takes time to find the right images to stick together, time to remove backgrounds, time to adjust the color balance so they match......like if you have enough skill to do something like that it is NOT hard to make everything else come together to make something that people won't automatically be like, 'damn, thats crummy.'

Anyway, I made this in about an hour.

That is definitely better than the one we actually got. If you put that together in an hour, then I really do have to question how much time was spent on the book's official cover.

 

[DimesDan]

That is definitely better than the one we actually got. If you put that together in an hour, then I really do have to question how much time was spent on the book's official cover.

Ten minutes.

 

[JD]

I think the most frustrating thing about these bad covers, is that we did get some great ones in past.