Process for the new DEEP WIZARDRY International Edition cover
(rolls up sleeves) Right. Writing work (and recurring health issues) have repeatedly pushed these pieces of work to one side for the last year and a half. Time to take a brief break from ongoing work in other universes to rectify that.
Here's the template that I'm building on: the international edition cover for So You Want To Be A Wizard. (Available only outside North America, if you're wondering what makes it international. These paperbacks use the New Millennium Edition texts—except for the international edition of Games Wizards Play [when it comes out later this year], which was written to fit into the NME timeline to begin with, and will go into its international editions with that text.)
The cover concept's straightforward. Relatively dark, desaturated backgrounds: one glowy (or somewhat glowy) thing in the foreground, in a color that pops, or in lighting that makes it stand out.
For Deep Wizardry, things get slightly complicated by the fact that so much business happens underwater. But there are some things we can work with there. A scene in which two pivotal characters square off seems like a fair bet.
So: background first. Underwater lighting...
Sunlight from above the water.
But naturally that's not how the bottom would look, because there are ripples on the surface...
And naturally the sea bottom isn't going to be featureless, so we need some weeds and rocks.
The distribution's not ideal on these, but that comes under "fine tuning." That can happen over the weekend.
Now for the main attractions. Nita...
...and Ed. (ETA: There are some scale issues here. Properly speaking, Ed'rashtekaresket is significantly bigger, in comparison with Nita, than he's being framed in this shot. But Nita had to be big enough to actually show on the cover... So some liberties inevitably get taken.)
Now, while this is all promising enough so far, there's a bit of a problem. Nita's not terribly visible at this point. So, time to engage in some visual jiggerypokery that will both help with that problem and do something to hint at the connection between these two.
IIRC, Nita was wearing a wizardly forcefield in this scene to provide her with air and other necessities. So let's exploit that.
In the render, I can apply to her figure what in Daz Studio parlance is called a "geoshell": a kind of skintight digital overskin to which special effects can be applied: such as light emission. (And Nita's hair will get one too.) Since everything else in the scene is cool-colored, this light is going to need to be warmer, in (at the very least) a golden range. (Or rosy. May be playing with that for a bit.)
...But obviously we can't leave her looking like that. So what I get to do now is lose the rest of the scene and render Nita separately, in the same position but with different, less blued-out lighting...
...then add her figure back into the scene, over the geoshelled version (which can be clone-brushed out later).
...So when we slot that imagery into the paperback cover template, after some tweaking, this is what we get.
...Still some things to correct or refine here. (Such as the main body of back cover text, as I haven't written the new copy yet. And the quotes may want tweaking: the NYTimes review [which the WaPo picked up] had some lines that might work better.) Colors, composition, etc etc, can all use some final touches. But I think we're most of the way there.
With any kind of luck, this edition will be available online in paperback and ebook formats for the non-North American audience this time next week. (I'm still considering whether I want to offer hardcovers on these as well.)
(sigh) Now I want some tea. And then, tomorrow maybe, on to the int'l edition of High Wizardry...
ETA 2: off @softness-and-shattering's question:
If I may ask, is it not your publishers job to do this work? Is this a continuation of the thing where authors now seem to be expected to do their own marketing too, or are you doing the new millenium editions 'on your own' or similar?
I'm doing them on my own. While there are numerous foreign-language editions of the original YW books, the only publisher to use the NME texts so far (for books 1-3) has been Lumen éditions in France, and I'm not clear whether those editions are still in print.
Whatever their status, that still leaves me with a lot of countries where I can publish. And if that job's going to get done—lacking other publishers' interest, which my agents would handle—It falls to me to take the work forward. Such are the wonders of our age that I no longer have to wait for a publisher to turn up. And should something suddenly happen for publishers to get interested (like a TV series or whatever) then i can easily withdraw my own editions and let my agents do deals with them.
Meanwhile, why (as we say) leave money on the table? There are other English-speaking countries on the planet where the YW books can be marketed (and more countries still where—when there's cash to spare to hire the necessary creative talent—translations might not do too badly). So I might as well get on with it! I've got groceries to buy and bills to pay like everybody else... :)
(And just pausing here to point at the page pinned to the top of my feed. If you want to help with those groceries, there's a good place to start: the ebook bundles are still at their pre-holiday sale prices! ...Unless you're in the UK. [I'm so sorry about Brexit, folks, but there's nothing I can do about that...])
