Blu-Ray Custom Cover art thread - Page 5

Hi everyone. I did this on commission for Chas, a member of this very forum, and he wanted to make it available to all. It is for a 14mm 3-disc case.

PM as usual.

This is what I refer to as a "simple custom" commission from my middle price bracket.

The client wanted to share this with all of you, so you are free to PM me for download.

A recent cover commission for Saturday Night Fever. The client asked me to share this freely, so PMs are welcome.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TonyD 

Fritz have you considered consolidating all the cover shots into one post, maybe the first one in alphabetical order for easy window browsing?

Actually haven't thought about it, but it's not a bad idea. However, I don't want people to think this is MY thread. My intention with this thread was to provide a platform for any cover-cobblers lurking about (but apart from Mike and myself it's very quiet in here). One option would be to make an index of the covers in the first post, but that's just too much work to maintain.

For now, people will just have to look in from time to time. It's not like this thread is frequently updated :-)

Here's my take on Misery.
Special thanks to Rybev.

Available by PM and soon to be found on CustoManiacs.

My second attempt at a Chaplin Blu-ray Custom Cover:



Inspired by another cover artist's Criterion custom for Chaplin, I decided to give this one another go. I made a custom for Chaplin last year using the silhouette poster art, but I like this new poster so much better.

It's been a while since I did a full write-up for one of my covers, but here goes:

The Front:
As always, the hunt for high-rez images for older movies is hit-and miss. In the end I asked the other artist if he would send me the poster image he had used. It was still fairly small, but it was something I could work with.

First I upscaled it to about twice the final size, then started overlaying some grain to camouflage the low level of detail. I create the grain effect by making a separate layer of 40% grey, then add some uniform noise to it. I use a brush-stroke filter called "Spatter" on that noise to clump it up and make it look like actual filmgrain. Then I set the grain layer to the Overlay blending mode and can dial it in and out using the Opacity slider. For this image I used two layers with different coarseness of grain. The finer grain was over Downey's facial features and the rest of the image has gradually coarser grain out towards the edges.

I also overlaid an image of a blank, sepia-toned photograph, with just a little bit of vignetting along the edges. This gave the low-rez image a patina of age and wear, something which was appropriate for the material.

I opted to recreate the tagline and title treatment from the original image almost exactly. One should usually replace all scanned text with actual type anyway, to ensure it is crisp and clean. First I had to clone-brush out the existing text, which was easy as it was placed in the black of the bowler hat. Phew! When trying to find a matching font for replacement, I find it useful to type up the text in a text layer, then highlight the font selector window and use the arrow keys to cycle through the fonts I have on my computer. The active type layer changes as I flip through the fonts, so that I see the results immediately. I have just about 900 fonts on my system, so it sometimes takes a while to cycle throught them all, but more often than not I can get a 90% match with what I have pre-installed.

The Spine:
As always I carry over the title treatment from the front to the spine. I also like to use the "official" logo and layout for the studios to make my customs blend in with the retail covers on the shelf.  
I read a comment on one of these forums once, that spine images are always ugly, but I beg to differ. The only fancy thing I did with the Chaplin image on the spine was add a slight drop-shadow to it so his feet would seem tied to the "ground".

The Back:
As I said, I had done a Chaplin cover previously, so I had the synopsis and the extras list already typed out. This time I added the credits block and retyped all the legal text as well, which I hadn't bothered to do last time.
I always type up every bit of text before I start to experiment with the images and layout. This way I know almost exactly how many elements I have to incorporate and roughly how much space is available for images. I can always take out an image or two, but leaving out the synopsis or the list of extras to accomodate an image is not an option for me.

I also like to have some texture to my covers, and continue the look of the fronts over into the backs. Here I just had to extend the grain/sepia treatment I had applied to the front poster and it made for a nice background.

The backs are hard, so it always helps me to latch onto a particular art style or theme to get me started. I was going for a Art Noveau vibe to fit the time period, and that dictated much of the layout. I tend to do strictly symmetrical layouts as a rule, but have been trying to break away from it. For this, however, a symmetrical, elegant approach seemed the best fit.

To keep in line with the theme of the source material, I used a font called Silentia to mimic the title cards of silent movies. This turned out to be a beautiful and versatile font, and I wound up using it for all the text on the back. Usually I find that what works for the synopsis doesn't fit the extras-list, but Silentia worked for everything, even the credit block.

The layout of the back took me all day, roughly 7 hours. The one I ended up with was my third version. I originally did some work on using a wavy film strip as a basis to build the layout around, but I wasn't satisfied with the result. It looked too gimmicky and worked against the symmetry I wanted. My second attempt had some busy, ornamental linework going into thick borders around the images, but it just got too cluttered and clunky. In the end I just kept the top portion of that element (the rings you see behind Downey's back) and made simple, horizontal dividers between the different elements.

I knew I wanted a medium close-up of Downey in character as the tramp for the top of the cover. However, all the images I found were of a morose, sad clown type Chaplin. That's part of the film, to be sure, but I wanted a lighter, more inviting tone to the cover. (The front poster was already serious enough.) I eventually found the image of Chaplin with the rose, which I thought was a perfect fit tonally. Again, only smallish images were to be found, so I had to do an upscaled/noise-reduced/grained-up job on that image as well. Downey's shoulders were cut off at the collar bone, so I had to do some extensions by copying other parts of the image and clone-stamping on top of that. Why can't things ever be easy? The colours of the original image were rather dull, so I tweaked them a bit. I masked out the rose to give it a particular saturation boost. The rose is the only really bright element on the entire cover, so the eye goes straight to it and it cheers up the general mood of the piece. The image still looks like a colorized b&w image, but it fits with the material.

When selecting screenshots I try to represent as many different settings or characters from the movie as possible. Considering these will be stamp-sized once they're printed, the facial close-ups tend to dominate. The lovely Milla Jovovich was my choice to represent the sexual content of the film.

Finally, I put an orange overlay over the entire cover at about 20% opacity to give it a warmer hue. This also accentuated the brown sepia tone, which I had suppressed too much originally.

There it is, the process behind this cover. It was a nice change to do a cover for myself after a string of commissions. These personal projects tend to perculate in the back of my brain, and when a little free time crops up they come to the surface.

I'm uploading it to Customaniacs, but will accept PMs through this forum as well.

Thank you everyone for the very kind words. It means more to me than you probably know.

Yes, I had commercial considerations in mind when I made this. I even left room for the UPC on the back, something I rarely bother with.
 

I finally got around to doing Batman:



You know, sometimes the retail covers are just fine as they are and don't really spur me on to doing a custom replacement. In the case of the Batman series, I found the last releases with just the different bat-symbols to be both tasteful and cool. Then again, sometimes you just happen upon an image that is just begging to be put on a cover, like the one I found here of the Hot Toys' (?) Batman figure.

Yes, the image I've used for the front is an action figure. Is it apparent? Not to me. Is it cheating? Perhaps. Does it work? For me it does. I just wanted to get that out of the way. I generally don't approve of covers, retail or otherwise, who use artwork not from the movie. I would f.ex. not agree with using an image from the Batman computer game (of which there are many really cool images). But that's the beauty of doing custom covers, and the attraction for graphic designers like myself... there are no rules other than the ones you set yourself.

As usual, my favoured image was somewhat on the smallish side, and more importantly, it was cut off just below Batman's breastplate. I found a different image of the same figure, taken under different lighting conditions, and in b&w. I used the torso from that image to graft onto my beloved head shot. It takes a little blending of course, and here I had to hand-colour the extension picking colours from the first image. In the end it was all just about covered up by the title treatment, but at least I get an A for effort.

The original image had just a blank background so that had to be pimped a bit. I've been doing several of what I call "Blue Fog Backgrounds" lately (my recent Terminator 2 and Batman front replacements f.ex.). Originally this cover also had a Blue Fog Background, but halfway I decided it looked better with the brownish/grey you see here. When doing these foggy backgrounds I take care to have some wisps of fog envelop the main figures, just to integrate them both. I also have to take care to match the colours of the foreground and background to avoid that obvious cut-out look. I have several images of night clouds and white fog on black, that I use to create the background, blending them with different overlays and hand-painted holdout masks until I'm satisfied.

It took a lot of experimenting before I settled on the bold lettering for the title. I wanted to use the subdued lettering from the actual title card in the film, but I kept coming back to the bolder letters. White seemed to work best, with a sligt, grey gradient for dimensionality and a thick stroke of darker grey. I don't particularily care if the principal actors are named on the front, but I wanted to take the opportunity to credit Michael Keaton BEFORE Jack Nicholson for once. Tim Burton is such a distinctive director (at least he used to be) so he always gets a credit with the title from me. True to form I keep my fronts bottom-heavy, as I feel it anchors the images instead of boxing them in with credits on the top. I also have my trademark centered BD-logo down there. You'll see that in all my covers unless it interferes with the artwork.

As I created the artwork for this myself I made accomodation for the extended background that crosses over from the front, across the spine and all the way around the back. The title treatment is identical with the front, as always. I also left room for an anticipated companion cover with the longer title Batman Returns. That way the spines will line up perfectly when I get around to doing another one. It pays to plan ahead. Or to put it in my favourite alliteration: Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance.

The back gave me a lot of trouble this time, and what you see is the 7th iteration of it. A bombastic Superhero movie doesn't really call for the decorative elegance of a Merchant-Ivory drama, so I went for the more in-your-face style. This is just straight up-and down square images and text. (The comic book panel thing has been done to death, by me even, so that was definitely out.) I just had to avoid the dreaded "boxes" taking over, where everything is placed in neat squares. Everything in good measure, I always say.

To break up the boxiness I slanted the synopsis and the title a bit. I also switched off the block adjustment on the text. I kept faithful to the guide I set for the outer margin, though. I see a lot of custom cover designers put text and other elements all the way to the edge, but I maintain that a little breathing room and a common margin makes for a crisper cover.

I try to avoid using borders around my screenshots if I can, but sometimes they're needed to tighten up a design. I kept this cover borderless except for the Special Features box which I wanted to demarcate. It is important to break these borders here and there, so the deep-etched Batmobile overlaps the edges a bit. That's not an actual still of the car, but a CG model someone made. I dirtied it up a bit and hand coloured it to look more like a photo from the film.

When selecting images, I wanted to avoid the most common publicity photos, but was limited by what I could find in decent resolution. I also wanted to avoid spoiling the Joker's apperance, but had to settle for a image where he has concealed his true pallor with make-up. The contemplative Bruce Wayne would probably not make the cut if this was a commercial cover, but I find it suits the film well. I tried to mix it up a bit to avoid just a long line of head-shots, so that's why that particular Kim Basinger image is there.

I have mentioned before that I use the cover templates floating around for every studio's covers. It takes a lot of the heavy lifting out of making official-looking covers, but I still find myself retyping all of the legal text and modifying logos to suit each individual cover. The Audio/Video specs boxes of many of the studios are quite distinct, so I never mix them up. You'll never see a Warner Spec Grid on a 20th Century-Fox cover from me. If I feel the Specs Box is too distracting I just take it out and type the spesc freeform.

That's that. Another Blu-ray cover under my belt. (Approaching about 120-130 now.) Hope I don't bore anyone with all the details. I know most people come here just for the artwork, but maybe someone who enjoys reading about the process can get something out of this.

Pending approval, this cover can be found on CustoManiacs or drop me a line by PM and I'll set you up.
 

Et Voila!



...now if only I could work up the desire to do the last two of the set...