The Unfortunate Bio of TheWalkingDaryl

Covers, Am I Right? (13/02/20)

Hey guys, how're things?

I was going to write this one last night but I had a long day and so thought I would postpone for when I knew what I really wanted to say.

So I'm definitely sure I've vaguely touched on this once upon a time in this book somewhere, but I wish to touch on it again and when I make my writing advice book, it will without a doubt, come up again, so if I get that done one day and you read it, you will find a lot of repeats within it from here.

Everyone knows that covers are the first impression of the book/story that you see. If it's a bad cover, it turns readers away. If it's good, you have more chance of getting people to read it, or at least start reading it.

Now, there are obviously some absolutely amazing covers out there, and there are also obviously some amazingly bad ones out there; we run into both very frequently on here.

Covers are incredibly important. Most of you probably know by now that I do my own covers (excluding Hunted, Dead & Buried and After Andy, as those three were created by other people, so credit goes to the respectful designers), and those that knew that, also might know just how frustrated I get when creating the covers.

Obviously, the more I'm making them, the better they get, and the past few that I've done for the stories I have coming up, you can put them next to my older ones, still tell it's the same creator, but you can see the difference.

I say this one now because I made one of the best covers I've ever done, as of last night and now only one person besides myself have seen this gorgeous creation.

No matter how many I make, I still make bad ones. To me, mine are just over the line of passable for the most part; I don't think they're anything special or on some levels that some creators are, but I like them and that's what matters.

They do their job and you can tell it's the style I always do, so you can tell it's the same person. I use the exact same technique with every cover I do, so that way, you can tell that it's my works (totally not because I only know limited things in designing).

I don't know if it's just me, and I know I've touched on this before in a rage frustration, but multi-man covers make me frustrated beyond belief. When I know I have to have more then two people on the cover, it makes me sigh internally.

I use photoshop, for those who wish to know.

I've found that if I have an idea of a layout I can play around with it until it works, but going in blind and only knowing who you want on the cover and not knowing how you want the layout, makes things ten times more difficult, so if you need covers and make them yourself or ask someone to make them, try to have a base idea you or they can work off.

If I put my latest side by side with my early works such as Outcast, you would see a huge difference. Just scrolling through my works can show you the difference.

Outcast and whatnot were the start of me experimenting with technique and whatnot and it kinda stuck.

It takes me usually a few hours to work off an idea and get something I'm happy with and proud of. Some, such as this one I did last night, I was playing around with for months, couldn't get it, and then BAM! found one picture that could work and it got done in about 3 hours.

Perfection takes time?

Anyway, fact of the matter is, make sure it all works with the story, the feel of it, and if you're new to creating covers, know that it gets easier and you get better at it.

Now, as stated in the last part, I wanted to let everyone know that I'm going to be putting a plan together for myself over this coming weekend to designate time to everything and I am already slowly on track as it is, but will be more on track very soon.

I have no fancy pics for you today, so we shall chat later.