Friday, January 25, 2013

Notes on Cover

I selected everything but the characters and header (actually selected the header and had to fix it later) Darkened all the bkgd elements and desaturated them a bit. Reversed the selection and super saturated the other bits Just going for pop. Try to ignore the bad register on the mask

9 comments:

Rickart said...

Hmmm... what do others think? I can go either way on the values.

Rickart said...

Also, keep in mind that the printing will probably go a little darker than what you see in a PS file.

MrGoodson2 said...

I am obviously not a maestro with colors. So go with your instincts. My intitial reaction to your color job was more like a coloring book cover. Aimed at younger kids. Maybe that's a good thing.

Tom Moon said...

I would say go with the originals.

MrGoodson2 said...

Tom plus Rick vs Me. Stick with the original

Davis Chino said...

Dudes--sorry I'm late to this.

I like Ellis's attention to the values, (which I do think get a weeeee bit run together in the other version), but the colors do get a little over-saturated and clash-y in his quickie treatment--tho' the difference between the two is instructive!

Looking at Rick's (something I'm totally happy to see as our cover, BTW), my instinct would be to "grey-up" both the purple fall-off of the arena structure and the sky. The colors are so vivid, I feel like they're battling each other a little bit, maybe?

On this value issue, the Robot, Cork, and the arena (and even center of the sky) all read as very close in value right now...I might try to make Cork read as "dark" against a "light" arena bkg by darkening and greying-up Cork's jeans, and moving the "spotlight" that's currently on the juncture of the arena walls slightly to the left and behind Cork so her silhouette/value gets popped a bit more. As it is now, the spot (which for sure is in a perfectly reasonable place) seems to lighten the wall so that it becomes the same value as Cork & Robot. Which hurts the read from distance.

And I like how the darker sky looks on Ellis's, but I think the colors are a bit too saturated, and probably it wouldn't have to be quite that dark to get the same effect?

Dunno, just my read. These are but quibbles of the minutest degree. 'Cuz it looks great!

One other thing--no periods between the letters "T.A.G." for the title? Does anyone else miss them?

This is all being written much too eleventh hour to count for much...but hey, we got a book gettin' done! Thank you Mr. Rick!!

Davis Chino said...

...I'd also go lighter with The Teen Ellis's hair, and darker with his suit...but that's just me!

MrGoodson2 said...

Just a Rick motivated to re-visit art means improved version.
That's happily how it works usually when you take another pass at art.
Not for me. I give up.
Thanks for extra notes Marty.

Rickart said...

I tried the periods after the letters in TAG and it looked pretty bad... Now that was mostly because of the kerning on this font. I could probably put in my own periods, but my instict is that it complicates the logo, which is likely not an improvement.
I'll tinker with the rest of the suggestions.