Wow, lots of replies, and it looks I better really do something about that staff texture. I’m still laughing at the Jerome Weidman though -I have no idea where that name came from lol. My name is Mikhail P. Schalk as Duoas got right. To answer PapaSmurf’s question, the book does have 2 editors aside from myself although they’re not professional editors, just friends who have a good knowledge of grammar and literature that also helped considerably with editing of the script for the movie.
Okay, I appreciate your opinions on moving the title away from the center, but it’s really not the look I’m going for -I want it to seem as if the title is almost shooting out of the staff and I really quite like how the staff centers itself between the space in “The” and “Last” -I’ll probably use a similar wider image for the spine. AndyD’s comment concerns me a bit about the printing press though. I may try and get a copy of the book printed in advance to see just how much the cover will be altered.
I have mixed feelings on the half-alpha banners and borders -I like them (If I do use them I will definitely go with a very dark color so as not to distract from the glow) but I think they make it look too bookish and the goal is to get the book to stand out from others. (Which is one of the reasons why I’m so intent on sticking with the “visually awkward” look of having everything focused in the center as AndyD pointed out -I think if it weren’t visually awkward the book wouldn’t stand out as much and catch the eye. I may use some sort of border along the very edge of the image though -I haven’t really decided yet.
I really like these mock-ups. They’re very helpful to me, even if it seems like I’m not taking any of your ideas. It’s really helpfuly to see what you’re talking about visually.
Alright, as I’ve been busily struggling to finish up the last few chapters I haven’t worked on it too much -I have this very minor update, and I suppose I should update the first post as well as this thread is getting pretty long:
I think the only thing I’ve done is invert the hieroglyphs because before the normals were being effected the wrong way and I’ve added a rock texture to the wall to make it seem more realistic so let me know what you think about that. Other than that I’ve just adjusted the placement of the hieroglyphs to prepare for creating the real ones as these are just stand-in for now. It’s probably going to take a while to create the final hieroglyphs themselves, but I’m working on it -After trying to use sculpt mode and realized it was too intensive to operate with at the multires level needed for my computer I changed my mind and I’m just going to use an image texture so I’m currently painting away a nice bump map in the GIMP which is more or less just a neater version of what you see there and I’ll probably fill in some of the hieroglyphs with gradient as well to make them look like full carvings and not drawn in place.
Oh, I also remember someone saying something about them looking too symmetrical? If you were referring to the first stand-in image I used -that was just a duplicated mirror of itself cause I needed the texture to take up more space. The design I have now is only symmetrical in some places and that’s on purpose. If you think it’s too much let me know and I can move some things around.
I’ll probably also use some sort of chaffing effect for the wall -I believe there is a script available which I’ll have to hunt down just for that purpose.
Okay, so I’ll try and do some work on the staff and post another update before tomorrow if I can. Thank you all very very much for your comments, you’ve been very helpful.
.
but that’s good because if it were a real wall of hieroglyphs having the whole mural just show things from the book would seem too direct -they need to be mixed in with irrelevant and unrelated images and texts as well.
