This week my weekend book cover experiment is a personal one: I made an alternate book cover for my collection of funny horror, Suddenly, Zombies. Below are the original cover and the jacket copy.
Zombies in space! Giant zombie gorillas! When life gets weird, all you can do is stick by your friends and hang on to your brains. Amanda C. Davis dishes out two short stories (and a bonus drabble) from the lighter side of the zombocalypse.
Stories first appeared in Zombonauts (Library of the Living Dead Press), Zombie Kong (Books of the Dead Press), and Necrotic Tissue (Stygian Publications).
This is one of the first covers I made, and I wanted it to be clear that this was lighthearted horror. I also had far fewer tools and way less experience back then, so I drew the elements myself from the two main stories in the collection. Here’s my rough iterative process on this one.
I like it, but I wanted to try a cover that would look more at home in the horror section while still conveying that lighthearted element. I decide the image of a zombie hand poking out of the ground making a thumbs-up symbol covers a lot of the imagery I want, so I go ahead and mock up something.
This is terrible.
There’s a lot of value in making terrible things, though, because it prepares you for the trouble you’ll run across in making decent things. I scrap every element in this version and start looking for better ways to do what I have in mind.
I need a decent thumbs-up. This is surprisingly hard to find for free, especially held aloft like I want. I decide I’ll settle for an OK symbol. Wikimedia commons has one. The arm’s not long enough, so I extend it a bit. (Amanda C. Davis: Arm Extender.)
It’s also surprisingly hard to find a free image of the kind of graveyard I want. I’d go out and take my own photo if they all weren’t covered in snow at the moment. This one is nice and crowded. All the tombstones are in Hebrew, which I enjoy because some of the earliest recorded walking dead are Jewish.
I use a green grunge texture to zombie up the hand, put shadows around the graveyard, hide the wrist stub behind some moss, and use a stains brush to discolor the “Suddenly”. This is exciting. I use very few brushes normally.
I check up on alternate meanings for the OK symbol, and swap out the cemetery to avoid Unfortunate Implications. This changes my color palette to include orange, which is fine with me. My sister encourages me to make the word “Zombies” less stark white, which I do. And that’s my final version.
I’m not sure whether it meets its goal and I don’t have sales numbers yet to show how it’s doing, but the new cover is up on Smashwords and Amazon now–and it’s discounted at the moment.
Do you think this is a better cover than the previous? In what way? What would you change if you could?
FONTS, TOP TO BOTTOM
- Dosis Bold
- Scratched Letters
- Dosis Medium
- Dosis Bold
IMAGE SOURCES
- Cemetery: http://www.pexels.com/photo/782/ via Pexels
- OK hand: Wikimedia Commons
- Moss: https://ununsplash.imgix.net/photo-1424643251207-ddb7094d2f10?q=75&fm=jpg&s=aa970acf270f3adaa9175b5858fd2124 via Unsplash
- Green texture: http://dezignus.com/%D1%81olorful-grunge-textures/ via Designus — free for the price of signing up for their newsletter
- Stains brush: http://www.brushlovers.com/photoshop-brush/6-stains-brushes.html
TIME TO CREATE
- 5 hours, give or take.
See all my book cover designs here. Inquiries accepted.
Amanda C. Davis 
March 9, 2015 at 12:24 pm
I like this so much better than the old version! It’s a great concept. The top font doesn’t quite work for me, although I’m not sure why… I think it’s something about the roundedness of the font compared to the straighter edges of the “zombies” font (which I really like). Also, the wrist is driving me a bit crazy. The straightness of it looks very unnatural — although we are talking about zombies, so it might not bother anyone else. 🙂
March 9, 2015 at 12:26 pm
You know, Megan mentioned not liking the roundness of the Suddenly font either. I couldn’t find a better one, but maybe I’ll look again. The wrist isn’t the bit I had to photoshop–check the source photo, she just has a ridiculously skinny arm! 😀
March 10, 2015 at 10:01 pm
I can definitely see your skills growing!
Here are my thoughts…I actually like the fun feel to the first cover a lot. If they were physical books, both in front on me, I would probably pick that one up first (the gorilla intrigues me)
That being said, I really like the font choices on the second one.
However, I am not a fan of the hand. First of all, before I read your commentary, I didn’t realize it was an ok sign. I just wasn’t really sure what to think, and I certainly didn’t get the funny/light-hearted feeling you were going for.
Also the shadow on the hand is off…the shadows are on the back/tops of the fingertips when your (admittedly limited) light source is in the same direction. (Shadow should be bottom right)
The contrast on the hand is off (as in poetically non-existent) but that may be intentional to make it more zombie-like, so I’ll give it a pass.
Can you tell I’m not a fan of that hand?? I wonder if you could take a hand photo yourself?
I like the cemetery background, it’s much more easily recognizable imagery, but I do like the added orange, so I’m torn on that.
Also, just have to nitpick…but it should be color “palette,” not “palate,” in your post above 🙂 Normally I wouldn’t mention it, but I know as a writer you do care about such things!