Starting this week, the latest limited edition hardcover in Scott Sigler‘s Galactic Football League, Book V – THE CHAMPION, will begin shipping from the Lair of D∅∅M. My word, what a pretty pretty book.
For this one, like the last book (Book IV – THE MVP), I was the cover and interior color insert designer. So yeah, me saying it is a pretty book is like a momma saying her child is pretty. Though, in this case, I’m more like the sister or the fashion consultant of the momma… the momma being, of course, Scott and his creative partner, AB Kovacs, of Empty Set Entertainment.
Since it isn’t officially released yet, the only thing I can show right now is the front cover.
For the front, our running theme is a photorealistic super-close up of something associated with the GFL or the series itself. The time around, we decided to focus on the Galaxy Bowl championship ring. Back at the end of Book IV, we saw Quentin Barnes lead the Ionath Krakens to the Galaxy Bowl Championship… so focusing on the ring makes a ton of sense.
As with the previous work I’ve done on the GFL series, I like to combine the visual elements of reality with futuristic technology. In this case, I took a standard GFL Championship ring and merged it with holography technology. See the final results below.
One of the things I like to do when designing these is to try to either incorporate one of Scott’s fans or refer to them in some manner. For this, since we wanted to focus on the championship ring on one of the human player’s hands, I decided to use one of Scott’s fans for the photo-shoot.
Luckily, I had just met one of Scott’s uber-fans, Chris McWhite, at one of Scott’s book release parties. I remember when I had talked to him after the book reading that I had glanced at his hands, noting how well-defined they were and that they would be perfect for potential future projects. When we had solidified our plans for the front cover, I called up Chris and asked him to be part of the fun. Of course, given his love of Scott’s work, he jumped at the chance.
What you can see below is the unaltered photo-shoot for the scene. Since the prop ring we had couldn’t actually fit Chris’ fingers, we had to get a little creative. As you can see below, we grungified Chris’ hands a little with dirt and fake blood to minimize the amount of post-production manipulation we’d have to do. We also put a place-holder piece of folded cardboard in the location of the ring.
As you can see, even with the preparation, there was a ton of photo-shopping to do to achieve the final picture.
First things first: getting Chris’ hands to look more dirty, hurt, and a little darker. Through a combination of filters, coloring, pasting of blood and wounds, I was able to give him the proper look for the unknown hand (hint: it’s probably Quentin’s). Looking at the two below side by side, you can see the extent of changes that had to take place.
Last, was the ring.
This, of course, was the most difficult and challenging portion of the photo-manipulation. Luckily, Scott had purchased a ring prop to use as a baseline. Unfortunately, even the prop ring was a little… under-stated, as you can see.
I had to do a lot of manipulation on the ring, especially on the back cover. Based on discussions with Scott and A, we had to get rid of the enamel gemstone and somehow get rid of the weird dates in the corners of the ring. You can’t see it well on the front cover image (SPOILER: but you will see it really well on the back cover), but I replaced the center gemstone with a multi-faceted orange gemstone and the outer dates with orange, white, and black marbleized stones.
On the front cover, the stone replacements were just window-dressing.
The real challenge came in when I designed the hologram logo and light-flairs. These effects alone are made up of around 47 layers of image effects. The shadows, glowing logo, the texture on the logo, and the faded effect of the logo are all designed to give the impression of depth. The light flair and the glowing lights are all designed to give further impression of depth and realism. Overall, I think it came out pretty well.
If you haven’t picked up your copy of the GFL books, head back over to scottsigler.com or amazon and get your copies today.