Cover art comment love meme!

[sylvaine]

Cover art! I love cover art, I love talking about and thinking about cover art, and I think cover art deserves more love. Thus, a commentmeme about cover art!

Tell us about a podfic cover art you like! Of your own podfic, or of the ones you've made, or from someone else's podfic! What do you like about it? If you made it, what was your process? How does it do a good job of being a cover?

If you want to talk about more than one cover, that is also more than okay! I would suggest putting them in separate comments though unless you're talking about them as some kind of thematic whole.

Comment on other people's comments! Let them know how awesome the cover art they're talking about is! Let's celebrate the art and the craft that goes into a part of podfic that we rarely focus on! \o/

(And, to lay that anxiety to rest: none of this means that podfic without cover art is inherently less valuable, or that cover art is a necessary part of podfic. This fest just happens to focus on cover art!)

Comments

I'll get us started

[sylvaine]

A cover I made for a multivoice pod I was part of! This I like about it:
- I thought I was very clever when I realised that putting white outlines around the characters actually makes them look more like part of a whole than if I'd just cut them out and pasted them together. I think it's because the outline hides that the lighting and background of the individual pictures of different. XD
- I was so pleased to find this picture of Shane - it's not a glass of drink, which would have been amazingly appropriate, but it's still a drink! Also his face looks like he's amused, which fits to the humour of the story.
- I always love having part of the text follow an outline because it always makes me feel very clever xD
- I try to follow the rule of "can you still read the title if the cover art is at 200px size or smaller, and I think I succeeded in his cover.
- I made about four subtly different versions of this cover & got other people to help me figure out which one was the best. Cover art betas! \o/

Re: I'll get us started

[godoflaundrybaskets]

Oh my gosh I his amused look! And I think the drinking regardless of the glass fits the title very nicely! (Also re-reading your comments about it, I totally wouldn't have guessed that they were separate images! So the white outlines really worked for me!)

Re: I'll get us started

[kdheart]

I really love the parrot! it's a perfect parrot
And the outline really ties everything together better

Re: I'll get us started

[xancredible]

You are absolutely right, the outline ties it all together, and while I can't read the text that's wrapped around the character, I still think it's a great idea to put it there and let your eyes follow that line naturally.

Re: I'll get us started

[revolutionaryjo]

I gotta try these white outline sometime, it looks great!

Re: I'll get us started

[bessyboo]

I remember thinking when I saw this that it was such a perfect base image! I love hiding things with outlines + shadows, it's a great trick ;)

First podfic cover

[godoflaundrybaskets]

I usually don't do podfic covers (although that #cover-art channel in discord is changing my opinion because *heart eyes*) but I was recently inspired to do a cover for a fic.

I believe I went and hunted down a similar font to what they use in the Pink Panther. I liked the way the pink panther body was gesturing like he was trying to indicate the title.

I found that even with the text and the image, the background was pretty plain still, so I ended up adding some random patterning to give it a little more life. I think it worked at least fairly well, especially for a first attempt.

Re: First podfic cover

[kaixo]

That cover is really nostaglic and cute. I also like the font, and how all of the pinks and purples are pretty harmonious, so that the blue of the helmet stands out.

Re: First podfic cover

[kdheart]

This is a cover that screams SHENANIGANS!! I love it!

Re: First podfic cover

[revolutionaryjo]

I really like the patterning!

Re: First podfic cover

[sylvaine]

Oooooh, I really like this! You chose the perfect pose for the Pink Panther, and I really like the background patterns! I also like how the colours all tie together without the title fading into the background, that's aces.

Cover by fire_juggler

[justaphage]

Here's one by fire_juggler they made for their pod of one of my fics that I really love. (On ao3) (here but as part of a multiple post).

I like how it represents the soulmate link and the physical distance that happens in the story. I also think the character images they chose fit the story well.

Re: Cover by fire_juggler

[yue_ix]

That is a delightful cover! Very simple, but as you say the soulbond link is whinsical and clear, and the distance actoss them made tangible. Nice! :D

[akamine_chan]

I love this cover because I think I managed to find the wildest, hottest, most out-of-control picture of Frank Iero to ever exist, and that fits so well with the story. (There's something about long-haired Frank, sweating and moving on stage, that hits all of my buttons)

The cover was fairly simply, just Frank against a plain background. I created a reflection of the title dropping below just to keep your eye moving down the image to the author and podficcer.

But mainly I had fallen in love with this particular picture and was really happy to incorporate it into a scorching hot podfic by argentumlupine.

[kdheart]

This looks so cool :D I really love the flipped title

[semperfiona]

I really like this one. Snow, for the title, obviously, and drops of blood because it's a vampire story, and a dropped rose because of the ambiguous ending.

[xancredible]

That's a really nice composition witht he white background, the drops, and the rose. The drops of blood didn't even register as blood to me at first, I thought they were bits of rose petals, but it makes sense that they're drops of blood. It's really beautiful and classy :D

[xancredible]

This is one of my more recent covers and definitely the best one I've made this year so far.

It doesn't look like I did much to it, which is exactly what I want to achieve for my manips.

What's actually going on here is that the reflection in the river is of a different city. I don't think many (or any) people have picked up on that so far, but that's alright XD

The top is Pittsburgh, the reflection is Moscow. It's a story about a long distance pen pal-like relationship between two best friends who've been pining for each other for ages.

I thought it was a stroke of genius when I had the idea to do something like this. The idea came from a pic of Moscow that I found where I thought of putting pics of Pittsburgh in the river that runs through Moscow, but since the story is narrated from the Pittsburgh-character's POV, I decided that Moscow needed to be the reflection. Finding pics of Moscow with a nice reflection was probably the hardest part of making this cover.

I'm really pleased with how it all came together, and even if no one else notices, at least I know that I was clever for a change XD

[forzandopod]

Oh wow! I def didn't notice the reflection thing, I absolutely LOVE cover art with hidden meaning/work in it. That's why I'm so excited about this meme bc I have a couple of covers that I basically have wanted to do a "director's commentary" on bc there are these subtle choices that I know nobody will notice but I still put in the effort xD

This cover is already absolutely gorgeous (I love the colors in the photo!! omg) but having the reflection stuff pointed made it even better!

[revolutionaryjo]

A recent one I think I did pretty good on. It's a stab at recreating the In Control with Kelsey logo with Ryan plus little Sim!Ryan in the corner who's an amalgamation of screenshots of actual Sim!Ryan & Sim!Shane I took from the episode the ghoul boys were on and a frantic amount of googling for "woohoo" related icons to include for maximum flirty status.

For a short time I considered actually purchasing the Sims to take screenshots because it seemed easier.

[annapods]

I love how you arranged the elements on the cover, not crowded and well-spread! Also, this cover works in all sizes, it's clear what it's about when zoomed out, and there are all those tiny details to discover when zoomed in!

[yue_ix]

Shout-out to Annapod's covers and especially her stickers. She has some for fests, rating, and birthday, amongst others.

It is a cute, simple and effective way to convey a lot of information without visually cluttering her beautiful cover layouts. They serve as visual tags. Even on my tiny screen, I can spot that green corner dot and know this podfic is SFW.

[annapods]

<333 I'm glad it works!

[annapods]

https://archiveofourown.org/works/17200298
I had some... difficulties... choosing one single cover for this. I'm proud of most of my manip covers and I adore the few I drew myself, but I guess I'm less confident in the ones that rely less on pictures and more on fonts and abstract stuff, so.
There is basically no pics of the POV character, and I was a bit wary of mixing brick space pics and comics drawings, so I went for symbols of both fandoms. This podfic is also kind of very soft, so I felt like leaving a lot of space was better. Maybe the readability of the cover could have benefited from some Leafs blue, but of well.

[sylvaine]

Ooooooooh, I love the aesthetic on this one! I love the summary on the cover - it's readable, but that doesn't feel like the main point of it - it feels like an aesthetic choice, mostly, and a good one :D I also love the way the title is offset from the white background box? IDK, it all looks really cool!

[xancredible]

Alright, I'm gonna add another one because, well, much like forzandopod, I'm always tempted to give director's commentary on podfic covers, so I'll shamelessly use this meme to do just that.

This cover I made for analise for last year's podfic big bang. There are several other versions of this available in my post here on AO3. The above version is the one that analise ended up using and it best shows what I did for this cover.

So, Brienne and Jamie are neighbours in this story (it's a Regency AU), and so I found a building that worked, mirrored it to make sure the doors looked similar enough (they didn't in the original pic...).

The manips for Brienne and Jamie were a bit harder. Brienne's bodytype isn't very typical, and finding an image of a lady in an era appropriate dress with Brienne's bodytype was really not that easy. The one I found probably still has too big boobs, but it's the closest I could get, especially because I also wanted a relatively plain looking dress. I only had to adjust the skin tone on the arms and cleavage to blend it with Brienne's skin.

As for Jamie... Just as difficult, apparently, because I couldn't find that many full body pics of men in era appropriate clothes that worked. I ended up having to put different boots on him because in the original image, the boots were half covered up by something else, but on the cover they had to be fully visible.

I made sure that Brienne is the tiniest bit taller than Jamie, too :)

[sylvaine]

Honestly, I love director's commentary, and this meme is definitely at least in part not-so-secretly about me getting to read more of it. xD

I am so impressed by all the manipping you did for this cover, and how well it worked! The different balconies really work to hide the fact that the background is mirrored, even though there's other clues that point to the mirroring. And the characters work so well! I would have fully expected that they were photos of the actors from period dramas rather than bodies with the actors' heads pastede on. I also really like how the whole composition ~~feels like a regency AU!

[sylvaine]

I'm taking a leaf out of xancredible's book and posting another cover that I want to do "directors commentary" on. :D

This is a really old cover of mine, one of the earliest I made, and I'm still really impressed with myself over it. xD I had a fairly clear idea of what I wanted - and could not find that anywhere.

I found a stock photo of a woman looking pensively out of a window, and I found a photo of a castle window. (Sadly this was before I started crediting all the resources I used in my posts, and I lost the hard drive that these photos were saved on, so I have no idea what the originals were.) I spent a lot of time cutting out the woman from her background, and then discovered that the perspective tool actually works *really well* to change the angle of things like walls and windows. :D The black & white aesthetic was partly because of the atmosphere of the podfic, and partly to hide the fact that it's all pasted together, lol. While I do think it's noticeable that the two parts of the background don't go together - the perspective is just slightly off - I think it's not something you'd notice at first or possibly even second glance, and that's the main thing!

I don't usually give my covers borders the way I did here, and I couldn't explain why it works to pull the image together, but I really think it does.

I really love the font I used here; again, really fits to the aesthetic of the podfic. Although I'm not sure it's what I'd use now, since I've started caring more about making titles legible, I'd definitely have a hard time convincing myself not to use it. xD

[yue_ix]

Well done! I'm so impressed you decided to just Do It Yourself when you couldn't find that perfect picture. And it really does have a wonderfully strong atmosphere. Neat!

[bessyboo]

I'm showing up a million years late with Starbucks, but:



I think this is probably the best of all my cover art. It really captures the feel of the fic, the versions of these characters featured in the fic (which is a branching AU so I had to use other images of the actors in 2/3 cases), and is overall just very successful design-wise. The text especially turned out particularly well. I'm proud of it!

Since other people are providing director's commentary, if there's any piece of cover art of mine that you'd like more info/the story behind, just say which one, and I'll give it here! All my cover art can be found here.

[xancredible]

This is definitely a cover of yours I've seen before and admired. It looks really, really good.

The colours work well together, the juxtaposition of the light upper half to the rich, red lower half really does it for me. The way the text pops without overwhelming anything is just *chef kiss*.

[kdheart]

Honestly, if I can get away with just text, I will.
This one was easy to make, in that I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to do from the beginning and already had the Unsolved font.
It was, however, ridiculously hard to find a fond that sort of matched the one used for the Whyborne and Griffin novels - it took about an hour of searching and my sister's typographic knowledge to figure out what exactly I was looking for.
But I was determined to take advantage of the BFU title cards style

[sylvaine]

This is such a good example of how text is sometimes all you need for an excellent cover! The colour + font choices are really perfect, and I especially like the way the slight shadow on the "widdershins" and the way the horizontal rules fade out towards the ends give the whole thing the illusion of depth.

I've made too many podfic covers

[reena_jenkins]

It feels like I've made too many podfic covers to choose from, so I went with the most recent thing I'd posted for the love meme.

I really like the color palate I used - neon and shiny! The central image of Luke, Leia, and Han is from one of the Legends books, which does the combination duty of being full of nostalgia for the Original Trilogy and also putting the OT3 center stage. There's even pockets of empty space (I usually fill the canvas corner to corner, but I'm working on not letting empty space bug me). Plus, I made this on my phone!

Re: I've made too many podfic covers

[sylvaine]

This is such a good cover! It's immediately obvious what the podfic is about, and I really like the way the somewhat empty space around the trio contrasts with the galaxy of the rest of the cover. And I really like your colour choices, too!

I'll just be that audacious

[xancredible]

Alright, good things come in threes, right? I have one more that I'd like to share and then I promise I'll stop bragging.



I made this for Brickgrass for Podfic Big Bang 2017. The story is mainly about how Ed just keeps on fighting through everything. Brickgrass wanted manga/anime-style art (rather than realistic) so I went looking for a pic of fighty Ed. There's certainly no shortage of that XD

I added the red background, and then decided to section off a little bit on the side because it just looked TOO red otherwise. I went with the Ouroboros to tie both parts together.

It's still one of my favourite creations. I made an alternate version in which I coloured Ed's hair & eyes (because I love his hair & eyes ♥) and posted it on AO3 along with the cover that Brickgrass ended up using.

Your bragging is wonderful and don't ever stop

[sylvaine]

Oh, this is fabulous! The contrast of colour background and greyscale character is brilliant, and I also really love the way the Ouroboros ties both together, it works so well! And also I am very fond of the text being sideways like that, and it definitely works perfectly for the layout of this cover!

photomanip

[phoenixtawnyflower]

So my fandom is a webcomic, right? So I have lots of source material to photomanip.
This is four separate images. The only person originally wearing an apron was the short guy in the topmost left.



Hands, camera, and background dude separate from head and torso. Shirt had to be carefully cloned to go with arms.




FIVE separate images. Each person and the couch are separate, and the guy in the front didn't have pants before.

(If you are wondering why the one dude is clearly the same original image in all three, it's cause he's a pretty minor character in actual appearances, but one to whom my section of the fandom has latched onto for projection and narrative possibility.)

There's another one along these lines that's my best work yet, but it isn't actually live!

Re: photomanip

[sylvaine]

I feel like I must have said so on Discord already, but I continue to be wildly impressed at your photomanip skillz! Sure, it's easier with simple drawn art like this than photos, but nevertheless it would never have occurred to me to, say, photoshop that apron onto other characters, and you've done such a fantastic job of it!