Spent a sunny Saturday doing some digital illustration.

Comments and Blethering: I've been trying to work out a simplified version of Tyler's Northern Mockingbird wing design (a more detailed rough is on the art page), think I might have cracked it here. This started out with the intention to show his balled-up fists, then meandered into trying some Andrew Loomis-style anatomy skeletons because I've been reading through his reference books, before turning into basically a big picture of wings and smugface Ty. Materials used: My beat-up old Wacom tablet, Alias Sketchbook Pro with the medium ink brush.

The rough base sketch.

And of course, in my typical style, this has all been a complex way of procrastinating from editing this gentleman's story. So I suppose I should get back to that.

Originally posted by Emma Maree Urquhart on EmmaMaree.com

After seeing this idea up on Jaime's blog from The Broke and Bookish's Top Ten Tuesday, I had to join in.

"Throne of the Crescent Moon" by Saladin Ahmed

Just look at that cover by one of my favorite artists, Jason Chan. It's beautiful.  Such a variety of awesome looking characters.

'Mockingbird' by Chuck Wendig

Loved the Blackbird cover, and love this one as well. Both remind me pleasantly of Death from The Sandman. I still need to read these.

"Shadow and Bone" by Leigh Bardugo

Beautiful, Russian-inspired cover art.

'The Fault In Our Stars' by John Green

Deceptively simple, but instantly recognisable. Click the link above to read a review.

"Article 5" by Kristen Simmons

An all-round wonderful sci-fi YA cover.

'Tempest' by Julie Cross

There's something wonderfully tense and dramatic about this scene. I adore the colour of the sky as well, and the slight "Hush, Hush" style to the poses.

'The Statistical Probability of Love At First Sight" by Jennifer E. Smith  

Super-cute, love the restricted colour scheme and how neatly they worked in such a long title.

"Wonder" by R.J. Palacio 

This is the story of a boy with an abnormal face. What a tricky book to think up a cover for, but this simple image really blows the concept out of the water.

"What's Left Of Me" Kat Zhang

This is a brilliantly illustration - it captures the title perfectly.

"Thief's Covenant" by Ari Marmell

To finish things off, another Jason Chan - and this time it's the story of Widdershins, a young thief. This is another cover which uses a restricted set of colours to beautiful effect, as well as negative space. I really like how confident and intelligent the young thief looks.

A few runner-ups that didn't make the cut:

"Cinder" by  Marissa Meyer. The cover sums up the story perfectly: Cinderella, with cyborgs.

"The Way We Fall" by Megan Crewe. The bright, bold yellow really grabs me here -- and I'm a sucker for image-inside-text covers like the original Delirium cover.

"A Million Suns" by Beth Revis. "Across the Universe" had a fantastic cover, and it's sequel is just as artistically well-off. This spells out the sci-fi and romance clearly, and the covers fit well with the previous book's cover.

Originally posted by Emma Maree Urquhart on EmmaMaree.com

Got some news today that rocked the boat much more than I wanted it to, and now I feel very metaphorically seasick.
As a result, blog posts may drop for the next few months, but right now I'm distracting myself by sketching. And by 'sketching' I mean 'auto-piloting to the same head tilted 3/4' that I tend to draw when I'm not sure what to draw. I spiced it up with inverted lighting, limited colours and BLOOD. So despite the laziness, this was fun.

And now back to drinking tea and writing, I think.

Oh, and here's a song to lighten the mood.

Originally posted by Emma Maree Urquhart on EmmaMaree.com

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Three new "The Network" character sketches have been added to the gallery...

[Show as slideshow]

A quick explanation on what they're about...

• The topless guy is Alex, the young programmer who created the virtual reality game The Network. He has a long list of mental issues including anorexia, which leads him to covering areas like his chest and stomach in bandages to create a slimmer outline when wearing clothes. He's also severely depressed, and when he's not taking suicidal risks he's flipping between self-hatred and a vicious rage. Great guy to have in charge of the world's biggest MMORPG, right?
• The one with two characters in it shows DT, the Network's youngest moderator in her cat-girl avatar, and hacker Muvo in his modified demon avatar. These two have a rough start in the first book, but with the game's owner acting a bit crazy, a moderator could use a hacker as a safety net, and a hacker can always use someone on the inside.
• Then there's DT on her own, looking a bit annoyed. She's a weapons-master character, which means she can come up with any kind of weapon to suit her tactics, but she's weaker with each weapon than a specialist would be and has poor strength and defense. The dark swirly business means she's about to yank a weapon out of mid-air, and that messy scribble in her left hand is a cable for connecting into the game's admin control panel and accessing her various order-keeping tools (like a big hammer).

Easter went by fast. Now I've gt dinner to make, and the clocks are ticking down to work in the morning. Have a good night!

Originally posted by Emma Maree Urquhart on EmmaMaree.com

I was sorting out the images on my Macbook and I came across this...

This is the original cover design I was sent 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.

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.

Originally posted by Emma Maree Urquhart on EmmaMaree.com

I was in the process of jazzing up FK with some plug-ins when I found an automatic wordpress update plugin. Itw worked like a charm, and now everything's working smoother than ever, complete with a new backend. The admin layout is a lot brighter and fun to use, this makes me happy. :3

Now, this blog has been neglected of late, but I'm working on sorting that. Look out for fun things like this in the future:

- Life updates. My boyfriend and I move in to our own house on my birthday, the second of October, which along with the workload requiredb to afford this is sucking up a lot of my time.

- Writing updates. New short stories are underway, including a new one you can read over at the forum.

- Art updates. I'm still drawing, I just don't have scanning time.

- Reviews. Books, movies, games, anything really... I'll be working on developing my critical abilities.

- Essays. I'm still in two minds about this, haha, it reminds me a bit of school, but I should be attempting some essays.

- Site updates. UG's overhaul is still not completely finished - I need to sort out issues with spam on the blog and news, for instance.

- Merch updates. I will eventually get round to designing new products from Punk Ethic. Where I will get the funds to create these projects is another question entirely.

- Creation of a 'member's club'. This is more complex, and still under construction, but I'm working on unifying membes via a feature called E.Maree's Army. It might involve premium forum status or access, early viewing of sample book chapters, exclusive wallpapers and other such goodies.

How I'm supposed to do this with SMF, WordPress and a normal HTML/CSS site is a good question. xD

...Fun times.

Also, if anyone reading this and is proficient in WordPress design, I'm looking for some help integrating the blog into the main site's layout. Give me a buzz at emaree@used-goods.net =]

Thanks for reading.

E.Maree

xoxo

Originally posted by Emma Maree Urquhart on EmmaMaree.com