Recreate a Cover Contest

Cindy from Princess Bookie is having a Contest Craze again, which includes once again a Recreate a Cover contest. Now normally I don't do things like this, because I have absolutely no talent. However, while looking at the other entries I got a really good idea for a cover, and so I bit the bullet, opened up Photoshop and started playing around. I have never, ever used Photoshop (or a similar program) before so this was completely new territory for me.

SEVEN HOURS LATER I have a result. Before I show it to you, head over to Princess Bookie if you want to do your own entry. But hurry, since it's filling up fast! Only the first 50 will count, and I managed to squeak in by number 46.

The rules stated that it has to be a redesign of a 2010 release, and I chose the upcoming addition to the Once Upon a Time Series out in June called The World Above by Cameron Dokey. Here's the original cover on the left:

The series got a make over last year with these new photographic covers. They're slowly redoing the old ones, but the four newest books in the series have this new style instead of the beautiful old Kinuko Craft covers each book used to have.

Although I like the new covers, I really miss the Kinuko Craft ones. So I had the brilliant idea to recreate one of the 2010 releases for the series with a Kinuko Craft cover. Here's an example of one of the older covers (on the right) so you get an idea of the model I was attempting to immitate.


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to see the result...


Ta-Da!

My Redesigned Cover

So obviously it's not as good as the real Kinuko Craft covers. Not even close, actually. But considering this was my very first attempt at doing anything at all in Photoshop, I'm pretty proud of myself. There's a lot more detail for the actual covers, but considering I'm a beginner and I don't have endless hours to waste doing things like this, I really like the result. The hardest part was adding the texture, which took me a #@*%!#$%$*! long time to figure out.

I'm not very happy with the middle either (where the title is) but I kind of ran out of time to play with it and had to use what I could. Oh well.

It took me ages to find the right artwork to use. As far as I can tell, The World Above is a retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk, and I wanted to mimic the peasant-type look of the dress in the actual cover. But most of Kinuko Craft's paintings are about royalty and were wayyyyy too pretty to work for this. But I finally found this painting of Joan of Arc to use and I think it turned out okay.

So what do you think? Did I do okay for a first attempt?