Once upon a time, I was anti-mock covers. I thought it was a little weird to put up a fake book cover on your site for a book you’re drafting or trying to sell. Then I wrote up my projects page, and it looked . . . bare. So I made up some passable mock covers (some obviously more time consuming than others).
Usually, I’ve waited until I was done or nearly so to make these. But since October was a “planning” month for NaNo, and I was only doing 50,000 other things, I spent a day making the “ideal” version of the cover:
Not 100% perfect (or, you know, licensed), but pretty dang good. Just looking at it gets me excited to write!
Obviously you don’t want to take off a day in the middle of NaNo to play around with a graphics program to make a cover no one else might ever see—but in about 20 minutes, you can throw together something that can inspire you.
Seriously, I tried it. I used a picture I pinned of one character, and Googled screencaps from a movie the other character was in (screencaps found here). Then I turned to Flickr for pictures of a rune stone (by Paul W. Locke). Some Magic Wand tool, cut/paste, resize, color balance, and add text, and voila! I put together a crude version of the above.
Inspiration in twenty minutes? That’s a bargain.
How do you find inspiration quickly?
Photo credits: Maggie Lawson by unknown (via listal), Garrett Hedlund from TRON: Legacy (found here), Viking coin by Ancient Art, Kensington runestone monument by Paul W. Locke
Awesome Jordan. Maybe post NaNo I’ll have to play around with that idea 🙂 I think you did a really good job. It’s not days of work from a professional perfect but the potential is really clear and the mood is set. FUN!
Yeah, not to mention photography with, like, the same lighting on the characters? 😉
Despite its imperfections, it makes me excited for the story every time I see it!
Thanks, Shelly!
You obviously have way more talent in this dept. than I will ever possess! I think that looks so cool!
Aw, thanks, Rachelle. But hey—you don’t need it with your awesome cover designer!
Cover art is something I’ve only ever played around with when ordering proof copies of NaNo projects. This looks great, well done Jordan!!
Oooh, proof copies. I hope they do that again this year. Fun!
Thanks, Trisha!
Unfortunately the CreateSpace deal is different this year, so you have to actually publish a book, and pay for the first copy, to get anything. You pay for the first one & get 4 free I think.