Cover Art and Logos

Kiskaloo wrote:

Ah, the Fontana Di Trevi, reminds me of my chapter "The Cyborg gets a Boyfried"

Kiskaloo wrote:

That one made me sad....  

Decided to go simple with this one:

I love it!

Wow Kiskaloo, luv these pictures! 

Hm.  I can't believe I didn't post this image here already.  (And, if I did, please tell me!!!)

This is for Henrietta's Christmas story, A Gift Repaid.  TSM suggested I post a CC Christmas story per year.  I doubled up last year for Rico and Triela to make up for my first year.

New TSM story, new cover:

Thanks, Kitty. It's up on FFnet now, and looks great.

Here's another one:

Hm. I waslanning to replace that image with one of Alf's Monty+Jethro pics, just haven't found the right one yet. How much trouble to redo this once I find it?

Easily done. Point me at the high-res image so I don't have to reverse-image-search for it from the postage-stamp thumbnail FF shows, and I can have it swapped out in 30 seconds, 20 of which would be spent loading the files.

Oh, make that 45 seconds. I'll have to rekey the frame color to coordinate with the image.

Two more:

TSM just pointed me at the new image.  Here's the composite:

Hm. Somehow never noticed Monty's a lefty...

Kisk, a person might visit your stories just for the artwork.

Thescarredman wrote:Hm. Somehow never noticed Monty's a lefty...

Well, Monty is actually right handed however, for the purposes of picture composition (and because I didn't realise what I had done until it was too late) here, she's using her left. I figure she can still shoot at least moderately respectably with it.

Could a kid be turned ambidextrous by the Agency conversion process?

Well, I know you can be become almost fully ambidextrous through training.

Thescarredman wrote:Kisk, a person might visit your stories just for the artwork.

Thanks!

I try and make the covers relevant to the subject of the piece.

...and stunning, to boot!

Cool!

taerkitty wrote:...and stunning, to boot!

Now I just need to come up with ones for Secret Base ~Kimi ga Kureta Mono~ [Secret Base ~What You Gave Me~], Yume no Kakera [Fragment of a Dream] and Public Relations and that will cover my current ff.net published stories. 



My "Storie Raccolte [Collected Stories]" compilation has 17 stories that I could do covers for, but they're published as chapters instead of as individual stories and I used the cover I did for The Cyborg Wears Prada) as the master cover.

taerkitty wrote:Could a kid be turned ambidextrous by the Agency conversion process?

I think it depends on whom you ask. Personally, for my own writings, I tend to say "no", but that's because I generally prefer to play the SWA as being pretty much flat out dealing with the "need to have" issues (lifespan, conditioning problems, commercialisation, general upkeep/maintenance/repairs and troubleshooting, etc) rather than the "nice to haves". Plus, at least from where I'm standing, "also we made you ambidextrous" feels like too much of a convenient wand-wave... and I like the idea that there's still quite a lot the doctors and engineers still just simply have no control over.

Same here. It's actually quite fascinating the power level disparities that fall out of comparing various authors' versions of cyborgs, both OC and canon.

Some early stories gave them bulletproof skin, etc.

Three More:

Devil in a Blue Chassis



The Transporter



Secret Base ~The Thing You Gave Me~
(the artwork is Wind Power by Alfisti since it inspired the story)

The use of perspective in that last one is so confusing but so intriguing. Is that Alfi's handiwork I spy?

Il Direttore wrote:The use of perspective in that last one is so confusing but so intriguing. Is that Alfi's handiwork I spy?

Yes - Wind Power.


And speaking of Alfisti, our collaborative effort for the Idyllic Lives thread:

Outside Looking In

How have I not seen this topic before? A lot of this stuff is really nice! So visually pleasing. :3

Apparently this was a cool thing? 



Personally, I gotta say that I find Kisk's minimalism more skillful than my own, but Pez said this should be posted here so I did.

And Pez was right. This is lovely.

Indeed it is!

Started an original fiction over on FictionPress.com:

Daughters of Icarus

Cover art for the Canaan fic I'm working on. 

Now that does not look half bad at all. Clean, and the typography is nicely integrated.

I aim to please ^_^

Adding to the collection, a new story for Jethro+Monty means a new cover...


This one owes more than a bit to the work of Saul Bass, which should hopefully help set the story's intended tone.

Typefaces, for those interested, are Hitchcock and Pilsen Plakat, the latter of which has been J+M's standard title font since their comic days. Soundtrack whilst drawing was this and that.

I'm curious as to your artistic choices for this cover. On the one hand you've used a very interesting silhouette aesthetic and limited palette to create impressions of class and fanciness. I particularly enjoyed the way you made the foreground very dark and the background quite light, such that J+M ended up blending into the background but were still prominent. The Bonds in a Row serve to draw attention nicely.

The Hitchcock typeface is, of course, similar to that which was used on literally every single poster of each Hitchcock film, but I will admit that since I was not expecting to see Hitchcock references on your cover-art, my initial impression was that it was some sort of cartoony thing rather than a horror-movie reference. Did you use this typeface with films such as Psycho and The Shining in mind, and intend such references, or was the more cartoonish feel intended?

----

On a more general note, I've noticed that you've started swaying towards minimalistic notes as of late. Is this an intended shift in your style, or a temporary experiment?

Alfisti wrote:Adding to the collection, a new story for Jethro+Monty means a new cover...

This one owes more than a bit to the work of Saul Bass, which should hopefully help set the story's intended tone.

I’m guessing J+M will be Flying the Friendly Skies?



Though he also did Continental’s logo for the same period…

Il Direttore wrote:I particularly enjoyed the way you made the foreground very dark and the background quite light, such that J+M ended up blending into the background but were still prominent. The Bonds in a Row serve to draw attention nicely.

I’m guessing those five fellows are butlers…

Oh I'm just assuming they're Bonds. Butlers works well, obviously, but I decided to turn them into Bonds for the sake of my own amusement. I find that the implication that J+M are both visible and invisible intriguing, and the interpretation of the fellows as Bonds makes it more spy-movie esque. 

TL;DR: I impose my own interpretations upon Alfi's work.

We all do.  And great job as usual!

Kiskaloo wrote:

Il Direttore wrote:I particularly enjoyed the way you made the foreground very dark and the background quite light, such that J+M ended up blending into the background but were still prominent. The Bonds in a Row serve to draw attention nicely.

I’m guessing those five fellows are butlers…

They're Butler Bonds...

...


In seriousness though, the intention was to evoke the classic, spy-fi, tuxedo-clad secret agent. The story was originally going to be called "Six Degrees of Separation", but I decided that was too long and cut it down. In this case however, if you count back from Jethro+Monty, it's six hops to the number six. They're also all looking toward J+M, who are indeed disappearing off into the background... albeit not without being observed this time.

Il Direttore wrote:The Hitchcock typeface is, of course, similar to that which was used on literally every single poster of each Hitchcock film, but I will admit that since I was not expecting to see Hitchcock references on your cover-art, my initial impression was that it was some sort of cartoony thing rather than a horror-movie reference. Did you use this typeface with films such as Psycho and The Shining in mind, and intend such references, or was the more cartoonish feel intended? 

Saul Bass did a number of the posters, and opening animations, for the Hitchcock films... including Psycho and The Shining. His movie portfolio wasn't limited to those of course and, as Kisk pointed out, he did a lot of design work for corporates etc. as well. I was more looking to evoke his, particularly mid-century, style, which includes the hand-cut lettering, rather than the Hitchcock productions specifically.

That said, I am hoping to keep Six Degrees tighter than AtAC was, so I would be lying if I said the association to his movie work was unintentional.

Il Direttore wrote:On a more general note, I've noticed that you've started swaying towards minimalistic notes as of late. Is this an intended shift in your style, or a temporary experiment?

Not really an intended thing, and not something I would expect to apply to everything. That said, I do like a bit of white space in my layouts, yes.

For Year Two, Volume One


and Year Four, Volume One. (No Year Three yet)



I lost the source files for the Year One volumes (originally simply Volume 1 - Volume 3), so I'm recreating them:

Year One, Volume One



Year One, Volume Two

Year One, Volume Three

This one was a lot of fun because I recomposited the original schematic. Part of it was to make the picture "denser," but part of it was a sense of Imposter Syndrome - is this really 'art' when I'm just swapping one image I found on the internet for another? Recompositing it took a lot of time, and it felt like I was actually being "creative."  


I still have Year 1, Volume 4 to redo, but it's somewhat late and tomorrow is a workday.

Gunslinger Girl Logo by taerkitty on DeviantArt