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This made me laugh- thank you! He works really well as a Centaur, and Damen's expression with your quote- perfect/priceless. LOL thank you!
Glad you all like him! Damen really is very versatile. And he takes expressions so well! His features are wonderful to work with.
Thank you- I did like working with him a lot when I was making him. Though....he's such a flirt with the other voices in my head. lol
Ah, the voices! I know them well! Some days I feel like I'm taking dictation instead of writing. It's the characters telling the stories.
And I could totally see Damen flirting with the others! LOL
lol-right? And yes..........constantly. lol Though, not with some of the ones that aren't out yet. Corey, especially. In my head, Damen is all "Nuh-uh, I'm too purty to die." XD
Did I miss someone? Who is Corey?
lol-no, but he's in the line-up to get created. Big. Tattoo'd. Attitude. Brawler. Think of his character like Chaotic Good. He's on the good side, but he'll still curb stomp someone if need be. In the story my s/o has, he's titled the "Boulder". Mainly because he hits like one, and feels like one when you hit him, and he's pert near immovable.
Ha ha, he sounds very interesting. I can't wait to meet him!
By the way, I have a big Australian guy like that in my Black Kat series. We get to meet Elijah "Stone" Murphy in the next book. He's a "stone singer." He can literally move mountains...with his voice. He's also crazy.
LOL- funny, he has something like that but for precious metals/gems. Not singing per se, but "Calling" as he puts it. You two are synced, I think. Corey is...not crazy, but not someone people would mess with. More like, cross the street if you see him kinda way.
Swimming in the same creative river
Wow, he looks awesome as a centaur!
I've been tempted to toss a few into the Centaur world, but I just haven't had all that much time to play with it. So glad Llynara decided to torment the men again. lol
You know it's one of my favorite things!
@deathbycanon Thanks! I'm finding Damen to be incredibly versatile. He does the extremes very well (angels, demons, magical creatures, etc.)
3D and Book Covers
With the job loss, I'm looking at working from home, doing book covers to supplement my writing income. It keeps me close to my family as well as the writing and 3D art. I'm a big believer in using as much 3D as I can on covers It's the way of the future. I can certainly still use stock photos, but I love the flexibility of 3D.
With Iray, book covers are now very doable. Most stock photos on covers are toned down to look more like paintings anyhow. It really doesn't matter what medium you start off with, as long as you end up with a decent cover. They all used to be painted. Photos on covers are actually a fairly recent development. All of my mother's books, published traditionally in the 80s and 90s, originally had painted covers. She got to know some of the artists commissioned to do her covers and actually bought the original paintings. She still has them in her home. When she got the publishing rights back to her books and went to turn them into ebooks, she didn't have the rights to original covers. They were redone with photos, which were made to look like paintings..
Cost-wise, I feel 3D is a better investment:
3D wins hands down for me, even if there's more initial setup, learning and investment involved. I've been acquiring what I need for a year and a half. Time to share the love. So I'll be focusing more on this thread and my Patreon feed, as well as building a site for the book covers. It's both exciting and terrifying. Stay tuned!
Doing book covers was one of the things that got me started with DS. I didn't realize at the time what a steep learning curve there was, but I had fun learning. Luckily, my skills have improved dramatically over the last few years. I would definitely agree with you that this is something that will become more prevalent in the future. Stock images are definitely overdone. Almost all of the books on Amazon look the same these days. The 'characters' on the covers are on way too many covers to the point where a person could look at a cover and think they already have it and move just because the cover looks so similar to a book they have already bought. I know I have several books by different authors and yet some of the same stock photos were used on all of them.
LOVE the expression on your centaur, Llynara!
I agree with you about the 3D art in book covers. With self-publishing, it's becoming more prevalent and more acceptable.
I'm finding that out myself, DarwinsMishap. I've been playing around with creating a character from a merchant resource, and accidentally clicked on the face texture for the torso. It was hilarious!
Thanks, ladies! I really appreciate your input. Covers is what brought me here too. Everything I've purchased here and at other 3D sites has always been with an eye towards how I can use them on covers and in promo art of my own. So it makes sense to use what I've been collecting for a while now.
I had planned to sell covers on TheBookCoverDesigner.com. I've followed them for a while and was always inspired by the artists there. But I looked again last week and was shocked at how bad some of the covers have gotten. The prices are lower, and so is the quality. I can't find half the artists I used to see on there. I don't know if they just hit a bad patch or what. The thing that stood out the most was exactly what you mention- everything looks the same.
I think that's where my niche will be- in creating unique covers. I'm not adverse to using any and all generations of figures either, with a lot of customization to stay unique. I have plenty across all of them anyhow. As long as they render well and integrate with the other parts of the cover, it doesn't matter what generation they're from.
I'm also working on my digital painting skills. I bought a tablet a few months ago for my birthday and haven't had a chance to get too deep into it. I've got plenty of tutorials and some really great programs to try out too. I may use digital painting to help blend and enhance the renders. We'll see. Learning curves ahead!
@darwinsmishap You know your guys will find their way onto those covers. They're already slated to be on my own books, but it'll be fun to see how they look on some other covers too. I promise not to torture them too much...maybe.
@Llynara - I'm trying to learn digital painting as well to apply it to 3d. Have you seen the Shannon Maer tutorial vids on youtube? Maer's work is absolutely amazing. Definitely worth a look.
Oh, thanks for the reminder about Shannon Maer! I found his Patreon site just as I was getting into 3D and bookmaked it to sign up. When I went back, I couldn't find him on there. I signed up for ShibaShake's instead and really enjoyed that until he also stopped doing Patreon. Great info, learned a lot. I will certainly look up Shannon. Love his style! (And yes, both are guys and I accidentally referred to both as girls because I'm terrible at guessing genders from usernames, and sometimes even real names. I also mistook IgnatiusSerpent and HinkyPunk as guys. Wrong again! LOL)
And hey- we can learn the "digital painting on 3d" thing together!
I'm terrible at guessing genders too, lol. Yup on learning together - sounds fun. I've signed up for a couple classes at udemy. The cost of almost all "classes" drops down to $10 all the time (so don't sign up for full price), and there are a lot of learning opportunities. I struggle a little with tending to watch a lot of how to vids, or reading pdfs rather than actually applying what I'm learning at the same time. But I'm getting better at practicing while I watch. I watch the udemy vids or youtube tutorials on ipad and paint/draw along on my tablet. I learned photoshop the same way and since I did get pretty good at photomanipulations on photoshop, I'm hoping the same will be true with Daz and didgital painting and drawing. I also like to write and unfortunately there are only so many hours in a day or in a weekend to do this fun stuff.
Thank you as well, Worlds_Edge, for the tip. I will check that out as well.
Llynara - I just took a look at TheBookCoverDesigner.com - and yes, it does look interesting. I think you are right about the unique covers, and it sounds like something I should look at as well.
I love using both photos and 3D for cover art. Beings I do my own photos I don't have the issues with over used stock or not having the right angle. My issues are more that I I can't photograph dragons and monsters :) I also can't afford the real life versions of the outfits or weapons. I love that I can use iray to replicate the lighting I used in my model or scene photos. I aso love that I have the versatility to use both, there are some things 3D just doesn't do as well as real life. It's also a hundred times easier to pose a RL model and it only takes 1/125 of a second to "render" the image.
As far as digital painting check out Sveva's store over at Rendo, she has some great 3D paint over tutorials.
Yeah, I'd prefer to use my own photos too, though I'm limited to little boys, chickens and prairie, LOL. I do have Sveva's tutorials and need to dig into them. Picked them up on sale when her store was at 65% off a while back. Thanks for the reminder!
Canva(dot com) might be of interest to those making book covers. They have template book covers, some that are free and some that are not. A lot of the cover art is generic, but the cool thing is that artistic people like those on this site can upload their own art. Then they can use the lettering/fonts to finish up the book cover. It might also be a place where you could sell designs, but I'm not sure about that. At a minimum, another tool in the tool box.
I managed to pick up her tutorials recently during the 65% sale, too. I'm slowly working my way through them. I'm going to seriously have to think about getting a cheap tablet, though. It's frustrating trying to do stuff like that with a mouse.
I got this one for my birthday and really like it. A few people in Val's FB group recommended it: https://www.amazon.com/Huion-Graphic-Drawing-MicroSD-Express/dp/B011L3HUKM
I have a Wacom tablet, the medium sized one I believe. Have had it for about 5 years now, its held up very very well. I think it was less than $200. Greg got it for me for Christmas.
Thanks. I put it on my wishlist over there. I'll have to see about getting one soon.
Ha ha! Mine are flowers n' bees!
Also the occasional vacation photos like Death Valley or the beach at Monterey, CA.