I need to make my spaceship cover perfect - and it aint there yet - advice?

I write sci-fi books and I put spaceships on the cover. Here is an example of the first book in my Dark Galaxy series.


I’m not looking for feedback on this one - it’s selling quite well. I’m writing the fourth installment in the series and I need to produce a similar cover. I’ve started creating a spaceship and, so far, it looks like this…


I’m happy with the simple arowhead design with engines slung below but pretty much everything else is up for grabs. Feel free to tell me where this spaceship should be improved.

If you need more, blend files, more renders, etc, just let me know.

Thanks

Mostly, I would just make the “dark metal” surfaces lighter, partly so that you won’t have problems with “it looks like there are holes in the thing” when it comes time to print the cover.

In the cover shot, the levels of brightness throughout the frame – including both the spaceship and the stars – fall within a narrow tonal range. (Except for the understandably-shadowed areas on her starboard side.) Even where a shadow is being cast by her spine, the depths of the shadow are still comparatively light and therefore discernible.

You might also wish to lighten the red areas a little if you intend to comp this with a starry background similar to the one used on the cover. I would definitely suggest making such a comp for the purposes of fine-tuning the presentation.

Aside from maybe losing that communications-dish starboard-aft (which looks rather like a gray balloon and which seems quite improbable sitting so close to a gun emplacement), the geometry looks suitably menacing. :slight_smile:

(Well, make sure that all of the gray thingies don’t look “glued on.” The outside of a space-battleship seems like an improbable place for any sort of “exposed piping,” anyway … any fool would simply aim at them and shoot them off.)

For me the issue lies in an ambiguous silhouette. I would temporarily make the spaceship pure black and rotate until the shape was a better read. Right now at a glance it’s only the detailing that’s saying spaceship.

also, have a look at this tutorial:
http://www.autodestruct.com/thumbwar.htm

i Think the advice there is absolute gold and has been incredibly helpful when I have been guiding modellers in the design and build of assets.

Thanks for the link. Here is where I am at the moment.


It is cool bro. I love it!!

I associate the typeface with amateur graphics design. I would really recommend looking into typography a little bit more. It is a hard subject to master therefore I would recommend going with something simple that will not harm the design as opposed to trying something fancy and possibly making it look a lot worse. I think it might not be a bad idea to look at popular book or movie covers in the same genre and just copy what you like in terms of typography.

As far as the 3d goes, I think it would really be nice to see a bit more connection to the environment, maybe some light effects, something more going on in the background - I mean there are so many amazing visuals of outer space out there… If you wish it dark, that is fine, however a dark image should not be composed out of only dark things in it, there can and should be something really bright there as well, as long as the ratio of light, mid and dark tones is towards the dark ones it will still form a dark feeling but you do probably want more contrast here to attract the eye more. I would imagine maybe some cosmos phenomenon going on in the background and bringing some of it’s colors to the model with light from the back or the side might make it more interesting. Also the more distinct and interesting 2d shape the ship forms the better - maybe try different angles as well… Well, I think the model could still look a lot better with more work on the colors, background, light and composition. I wouldn’t stop working yet - it looks like it has a lot of unused potential still :slight_smile:

Thanks for your input :slight_smile:

I’m still working. I’ll post more progress, as and when…

You could add rim lighting from different sides making the detail shapes of the lower parts of the ship easier to read and to get more contrast. Creating small windows with lights could give a scale reference.