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Cover Art For The Book of Transformations – You Decide

You can have any cover you like, as long as it’s one of these two. Here we have a cover art draft for The Book of Transformations, the third book in the Legends of the Red Sun series, and there are two different crops of the artwork. I repeat: this is a draft. It is not finished: it’s low-res, the character isn’t quite set into the picture properly, and the final will be much more detailed and painterly, to bring it in line with the others, but first we need to decide which crop is better. Neither my editor Julie nor myself could come to a thorough conclusion, so we thought we’d put the question out to the blogosphere. I think I prefer the close-up version. So what do you think?

Oh the figure here is Lan, a new character: she’s a transwoman, and one of the leads of the novel.

Close-up:

Full-body:

Keyword related posts:

  1. Bantam Spectra Cover For “Nights Of Villjamur”
  2. Book Cover Conversations Are So Very Clichéd
  3. Chick-Lit Cover Up
28
Sep 2010
AUTHOR Mark Newton
CATEGORY

art & photography, genre stuff, my books

COMMENTS 61 Comments
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  • http://www.warpcoresf.co.uk/ Ros

    I like faces on covers, as a rule. But the girl looks like she’s trying and failing to do heian nidan, which as any karateka will tell you is a yellow-belt kata, so not even very advanced. I’d vote for even more of a close-up than you’ve got in the first one, and a much better pose.

  • Brian

    They are both awful. The pose is terrible, she looks bored, and why is the “Legends of the Red Sun” illustrated by a YELLOW sun blaring away in the middle of the pic?

  • http://murf61.blogspot.com Murf61

    A bit late to the party but I’m not keen on the figure at all, though the cityscape is pretty cool, so I’d go with #2 as she is less prominent. No, not keen on the girl at all… too timid-looking for me. A stronger pose might help, but at the moment she looks like she is doing the dance from Adam Ant’s Prince Charming video!

  • http://jonathandanz.wordpress.com Jonathan

    I posted this over at A Dribble of Ink:

    “If the model and the background are set in stone, I would prefer bringing the model even more into the foreground like #1 but keep more of the city visible like #2.

    In a perfect world you would have a tiny figure and the city looming in the background, like the Spectra Nights of Villjamur cover. That’s just me.

    With the full body shot, she looks like she might just be getting her freak on.”

    …And then I saw your twitter comments…

    Thanks for opening the discussion to readers.

  • http://markcnewton.com Mark Charan Newton

    Jonathan – ignore what I say on Twitter! It’s usually typed first and thought about later.

  • Chris Reason

    Hi Mark,

    The first jacket gets my vote, although I think the girl is too distinctive as a visual character, she should be more ‘generic’ along the same lines as ‘City of Ruin’ so readers can fill/flesh out the details themselves.

    Regards

    Chris

  • Andrew Carter

    Definately the first Mark. Though I like the view of the city in the second – so maybe a figure sitting on the edge of the sunlit patch looking away ie at the view. Would seem more in keeping with CoR – more of a sense of mystery.

  • Rachel

    So much hate! I *love* this cover (the first one). Admittedly the sun could be redder and the model isn’t a martial arts expert, but who really cares because I think Lan will sell books!

  • http://sathishr.blogspot.com sathish

    I prefer the the second one. Love the back drop of the city!

  • http://christinesenter.com Christine Senter

    The second one. It shows not just the girl, but the entire scene.

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