When Book Cover Designers Get Lazy
I was sorting out the images on my Macbook and I came across this...
This is the original cover design I was sent as part of a mock-up for the slipcover of the Greek "Dragon Tamers" hardcover. Looks good, right?
If you're not a gamer, reader or designer then yes - it's shiny. Attention grabbing. Looks good.
...But there's something not quite right. Apart from the strange character in the bottom who might be the publisher's mascot, the book's protagonist is a black-haired girl. So immediately, some mental alarm bells are ringing about this cover designer's attention to detail.
Wait, haven't I seen that guy before...?
Final Fantasy E.Maree?
That's the cover art for Final Fantasy X, voted by Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu to be the greatest video game of all time and fifth in IGN's "Top 25 PS2 Games of All Time". Selling 6.6 million units worldwide, it's a pretty big deal - the Final Fantasy series is one of the best selling video game franchises.
I pointed out the mistake to the publishers and it was redone, though I never did get an explanation as to how that happened.
The final Greek cover.
This amusing event shows that book cover designers are far too often really bad. There are plenty of great ones who can sum up a book in a simple image, and there are a lot of famous, stunning covers - but there are also thousands of 'designers' who think it's acceptable to Google Image Search the keywords that are vaguely related to the work and badly edit it all together with a Photoshopped font on top.
DT1 in the UK was also guilty of Google Image Search-itis.
It isn't okay. Google Image Search images are almost all still under copyright, and sticking them all together and selling it is just profiting easily of other people's work. There are people who work hard to create these works - and it's not usually well-known video games that get ripped off, it's independent artists who don't have a chance at taking legal action when their work is stolen for commercial use.
Because of how difficult it is to be sure photo-based covers, especially foreign ones, come from open sources the illustrated covers for my work tend to be my favorites. The amount of work that goes into the airbrush-painted cover for UK Dragon Tamers 2, digitally painted Dutch DT1 and traditionally painted somewhere-Nordic-maybe-Swedish DT1 all stand above the rest for the sheer effort taken. Done well they can create a unique impression of a story's cast.
That's not to say there aren't plenty of great covers made using photographs - most good covers are these days. Two of my recent favourite designs "Fallen" and "Hush, Hush" both use photographs to stunning effects.
In the end, though, there's always people trying to take shortcuts and making things unfair for everything.
Webcomic Review: Boss Noodle!
I’ve been a webcomic junkie since I was first introduced to the scene (Megatokyo, via a link in a Wikipedia article on l33tsp34k. I wanted to be cool.)
It’s still a scene I’m passionate about, and being around to watch new ones spring into the limelight and old ones become hugely successful commercially (Megatokyo, Penny Arcade, Ctrl+Alt+Del) has meant a lot to me.
I consider myself a veteran, critical of not only art, but story, layout, site design and more.
One day I will write and produce my own.
Until then, you have reviews...
So, let’s start with Boss Noodle – the newest entry from the artist of Chugworth Academy.
Chugworth is quite an infamous strip – the artist began as an 'adult' artist, before using his talent in the anime style to start up a webcomic. Since then, the style has improved from great to insanely good looking, but the writing has always fallen flat. Dull and repetitive, with bad jokes that became recurring jokes and perplexing backed-into-a-corner plot twists, it turned a lot of people off more than the badly-planned innuendo of it’s pasts strips had.
Now, after Chugworth has been left stagnating for forever and a day, a new project appears – the oddly named Boss Noodle.
Not only does it boast Dave Cheung’s fantastic art, but something else – a plot. And so far, it’s not a bad one either.
Even the art has improved hugely – the lighting effects are beautiful, and Cheung has expanded his body types to include more curvaceous (not to be confused with fat) women – and the new character Melody, who flaunts the curves and a cute personality similar to a toned down Sally from Chugworth, is adorable.
So far, the plot’s looking good – well plotted with an episodic style of update (check the progress bar to find out roughly how far along the next update is), there’s no noticeable flaws – though the character design of Melody, cleavage ahoy, doesn’t quite mesh with the innocence established in her opening scene.
Let’s see how it goes…
Art: 5/5 – Fantastic lighting and cute, if believable, character designs.
Layout: 3/5 – Great for the standard square-box style, but lacks dynamic in frame shape and positioning.
Story: 4/5 – No real flaws, but needs development as it’s in the early stages. However, it's a huge improvement over Chugworth's offerings.
Site Design: 3/5 – A decent system, but it’s very ‘default’ with only minimal effort made to customise it.
Updates – Comic is ‘when available’, but constant bonus content updates mean it’s regularly update.
OVERALL: 4/5