BlueSmoke

SFF Insiders Cover Reveals

Leave a Comment / By /
no title has been provided for this book
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Cover reveals are an exciting tool for creating visibility and interest for an up coming book release.  SFF Insiders is happy to contribute to the effort.  Find the form to request a cover reveal at SFFInsiders.com under the Info menu.  Link included below.

Authors should check out our thoughts on leveraging cover reveals here Cover Reveals and Convenience
 
This post will be an ongoing thread to highlight cover reveals that I have cobbled together for SFFInsiders.com.  SFF Insiders is a blog review Team sharing our love of science fiction, fantasy, horror and all of the subgenres on multiple social media platforms.

 
Authors can find the request form for a reveal here

 

I’ve enjoyed putting these together for the team.  It has been a learning experience. I do not have any kind of background in graphics.  To date I have been using a combination of Book Brush, GIMP, Vibrance and Capcut. 
GIMP is a free open source Photo Shop/Correl Draw like clone.
Bookbrush is a good resource for converting cover images to book like and teaser renderings with many options. Consider it a Canva competitor. They have a free version with limited downloads if you are curious.
Capcut is used for the video offerings. If you scroll through these posts you will see my own evolution as I add to my tool box.  I don’t consider myself the creative type at all and imagine many can far exceed my efforts.
Vibrance allows some animation of covers utilizing anchors and arrows to dictate the flow and direction of specific parts of an image, something they call Magic Motion. It also has “3D Parallax” that allows for creating 3D like zoom/pan effects from an image.
 
I am slowly playing with Blender, an open source free 3D modeling/animation platform and hope to start picking at DaVinci Resolve to move on from CapCut. The learning curve on both of these are rather steep for me, but man can they turn out awesome content.
 
UPDATE 5/24/2024: I saw an author comment somewhere that “All of the book reveals are starting to look the same.” The comment wasn’t regarding any that I had specifically worked on but that comment stuck with me. Around the same time I saw an impressive video reveal that piqued my interest. After some searching I downloaded Capcut. Capcut is a free video editing app for mobile and desktop that is pretty darn slick. It has a subscribe option but the free version is loaded. Stay tuned and you can follow my clumsy efforts at learning something new.

 
Scroll down for the reveals.
 

Happy reading!

 
 
This one for Tim McKay was an opportunity to stretch things in regard to the tool box. The reveal video was made predominantly with Blender. Blender is an free open source 3d animation program. What I put together here is barely crawling in regard to the potential of the program. I hope to incorporate more scenes made with Blender in 2025.


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 


 

 
New for this effort was animating the tease behind the stock BookBrush reveal template. It involved several layers in Capcut and exporting a piece of the vid by itself and then including the export as part of the project’s media.

 

Falling Into Oblivion by Aaron M. Payne prompted me to try a couple of new things. For the teaser I pictured the mechanical dragon crawling out of the torn edges. I didn’t even know what to call it to achieve the 3dish effect. After a few searches tutorials for pop outs was getting me close. I recognized that a shadow was missing in order to fool the eye. Look at some of the most basic games and you will see a very basic image that appears to be floating. The magic for it is adding a shadow. A few more tutorials and I was able to get it close enough for a first try using Gaussian Blur in GIMP as the layer under the dragon.

Another add that is pretty basic was dropping the man and dragon onto the cover. Cropping the characters from the cover and saving without a background combined with key frames in CapCut furnished the effect.
SFFInsiders.com

 
SFFInsiders.com

 
SFFInsiders.com

 
SFF Insiders.com

 
SFFInsiders.com

 
The cover for Dan Hanks’ THE WAY UPS DEATH is gorgeously splashed with an array of color. To date all of the reveals I’ve worked on had been self published. As this one is backed by publisher Angry Robot I knew right away I wanted to emphasize the publisher along with the author and book. They are a team going to market together. Angry Robot reposted our reveal so I have to assume they were okay with the liberties I took with their logo.
 
There are a couple of sloppy points I would clean up if I could do this one over. I missed a key frame in the beginning that drives the fade and flash effect and would play with the audio levels more.
 
I grabbed Angry Robot’s logo and used GIMP for a quick edit to make the logo element transparent. The rest is accomplished in Capcut with a couple of transitions and key frames used for the beat fades and reverse zoom.
Pixabay supplied the heart beat and flat line audio. Matching visual effects with audio beats increases the dramatic impact.


 

 
A Princess of Oldir by Bryan Wilson (find him on X @BWilsonAuthor)
Pulled in sound and video from Pixabay. BookBrush was used for the the generic teaser cover. GIMP was used for the cover related image of the title/planet rising. I also used a gimp layer to add the atmospheric texture to the BookBrush teaser. I believe I used another image from Pixabay for the ‘tecture’. That mode for that layer was set to Darken Only. Using a mask, adjusting opacity and some judicious use of the eraser tool results in the final teaser image you see. I tried to work on matching the key frame pan and zoom elements and transitions to beats in the music. Watch it without sound and then with. The effect is dramatically different.

 

This one was more fan art than an official reveal. I posted it a couple of days after the official SFF Insiders cover reveal for Wrong Stop to avoid stepping on our own post. The alien and audio is from Pixabay. I’d love to give the creator credit but it is listed under multiple profiles. They might have a problem with intellectual property rights. Using a cover reveal image created with BookBrush with the actual cover image in Capcut I just dropped a basic burn transition between the two.
 
I was tremendously pleased when Rex asked if he could use it on his own website to help promote Wrong Stop. Hell yeah, Rex!

 
This one for Rex Burke was actually one of the first projects where I used Capcut. It had a later post date than the previous animated reveals. Note that I didn’t include any audio or pan and zoom elements. I didn’t know a thing about those techniques yet.
What I did work out was how to animate the flying saucer’s lights. I created nine separate images in GIMP that altered each of the lights individually in each image and imported those into Capcut. Adding each image sequentially to the time line allows for the illusion of animation. It actually worked out well for this reveal.


 

This one was fun to work with and where I began to explore a bit more with ‘key frames’ and audio in Capcut. Finding beats in the flow of imagery to match up with the audio for transitions lends a dramatic feel to the end product.

 
I didn’t have much time for this one and stayed with a static image. I’ve developed a couple of principals in design. Stick with imagery from the actual cover is the first goal. Any outside imagery used should complement the cover and/or the theme of the book. Incorporating the author’s name and title are priorities but not always feasable. Many time it maybe one or the other or partials. As I am creating these for SFF Insiders, tagging the reveal with the logo is a must.

 

‘A Reckless Courage’ is my first effort at a cover reveal using Capcut. It is the third project I worked on using it.


 

 


 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by SFF Insiders (@sffinsiders)

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by SFF Insiders (@sffinsiders)

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by SFF Insiders (@sffinsiders)

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by SFF Insiders (@sffinsiders)

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by SFF Insiders (@sffinsiders)

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by SFF Insiders (@sffinsiders)

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by SFF Insiders (@sffinsiders)

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by SFF Insiders (@sffinsiders)

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by SFF Insiders (@sffinsiders)

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by SFF Insiders (@sffinsiders)

Leave a Reply