HOW TO CREATE AND DESIGN COMMON BOOK COVER IMAGES: PART 3. SPACECRAFT AND OTHER VEHICLES
Welcome to my articles on how to choose, create and design popular book cover images in the sci-fi and dystopian genres. In this PART 3 of the 3-part series we will concentrate on the role of spacecraft and other sci-fi vehicles.
To get us started, here are some spacecraft presented on the book covers of some commercially successful books:
And here are some spacecraft shown on some of my book covers:
Combining a spacecraft with a striking planet (or planet Earth) is often a winning move and draws the book browser convincingly to the book cover. If they like the title they’ll move on to the blurb and then perhaps read the opening paragraphs. The book cover will have done its job. Just make sure the images on the book cover relate to the story in some way. Below are some of the spacecraft you can buy and use from 3-D modelling sites like DAZ 3-D:
Below, I have created a book cover for this article (just now) that features a spaceship a 3-D model. I used the background image objects I produced in an earlier article in this particular series that featured planets. Now I have a book cover that features the spacecraft with striking planets. In order to make the 3-D spacecraft model look more realistic I added an ethereal effect and overlaid dirt on parts of the spacecraft. I also softened the edges a little and added 1 point of Gaussian blur. Here is the finished result:
That’s all for this article. Hopefully the images presented in it will help you find ideas for presenting some of your sci-fi book covers. Don’t place too many objects on your book cover image and over clutter it. I tried 5 planets at first on my above Forbidden Galaxy book cover, but realised it was overkill.
And that’s also it for these articles on HOW TO CREATE AND DESIGN COMMON BOOK COVER IMAGES in the sci-fi and dystopian genre. In summary, I would say the four main points to pick up were the power and popularity of planets, robots, 3-D models (including people) and spacecraft on book covers.
