SPOTLIGHT ON ANNE CAIN

Here's the follow up to the cover art discussion from last week: When good art goes bad and how to stop it.

Anne Cain was kind enough to give me some time (thank you, Anne!) and as part of her interview with me, she offered some really interesting thoughts on design elements. It's a micro-workshop on knowing what looks good, so without further ado:

I think some concepts might not translate very well. Certain things just look...bad. Not to sound negative, but that's a fact no one can deny. Like colors -- there are some colors that just look awful no matter how good the artist's intentions are. Just off the top of my head, one color combo I don't like is egg plant purple and fire-engine red. That's bad, and any artist worth his or her color wheel should know that.

Sometimes a cover can have a great idea behind it, but the overall design doesn't really work. There are basic design principles graphic artists pick up on the job or at school, and those are really helpful tools when it comes to creating good 'flow' and a strong layout. I remember giving one of my profs a 'huh?' look when we spent a class just playing around with simple geometric shapes in Illustrator and arranging them in different compositions to see what works best. But it ended being a good learning experience, and I'm applying the same technical approach now. And art is a field where you're constantly learning and evolving -- getting stuck in one mindset really hinders the creative process so artists can't be afraid to try something different.

Ebook covers are just as versatile as those on print books -- what looks good on a bookshelf will usually look good in e-form. Authors do need to keep in mind that since the art is going to be shrunken down to thumbnail size (about 100px wide) on websites and blogs, a really detailed cover might end up looking too busy. So don't ask for too many elements in the cover art, or at least keep in mind your artist will most probably eliminate a couple of things to keep the art from looking too hectic.

That's helpful, I think. Extrapolating, the most important thing for an author to remember is not to ask for too many elements in the design or the cover will look busy. The sexiest covers I've seen tend to be very simple.

For instance, Bam declared this a hot cover of the week, sometime before the holidays and I completely agree. It's gorgeous.

As a final thought, I'm going to revisit April because she sent me some more interesting and important information after I ran the article last week. We were still talking about bad covers, and she had this to say:

Well ... part of it is what you mentioned before -- the skill of the artist (as well as the willingness of the publisher to pay for such). Anne and I both draw by hand when we're not doing covers. So do Christine Griffin, P.L. Nunn, L.W. Perkins, Will Kramer, and the like. The ability to draw by hand really does add a lot to the arsenal of skills, even if you work only with photographs or even sometimes with Poser. And the astute publisher will usually pay for that.

Unfortunately, most Poser artists get into using Poser to begin with because they're unable to draw and would like to be able to create art, especially that which features people. People are hard to render realistically, even if you CAN draw/paint by hand. There is not only the anatomy to consider but the ephemeral luminescence in the skin tones, the subtle facial expressions, etc. It's one of those things Irene Gallo, art director at Tor, really looks for in an artist. Anyone who can paint people realistically can pretty much do anything.

Now consider the hobby artist who wants to create realistic people art but who hasn't even attempted doing the same by hand ... or who HAS attempted it but doesn't do well at it and therefore doesn't bother any more. Poser becomes not only a shortcut to them; it becomes a replacement. In other words, they focus their time and their skills on that tool only. If they want to improve, they buy more textures, more props, more characters, or more clothes, or they upgrade their software, and then they pose their figures or organize their Poser libraries. That amounts to a lot of time, effort, and money on their part -- probably just as much time, effort, and money that I spend sketching, painting, shooting, or buying good stock photos and fonts. The point is, it becomes their entire arsenal of skills.

Why would they bother venturing away from Poser, then? As much work as it might take them, it still creates art so much more easily and realistically than if they did it by hand. So why bother practising other skills?

Then, of course, there's the pay. [Some e-pubs] pay as little as $25 per cover, which to an artist who might spend two or three hours on a cover (or a lot more) is really not much. The DAZ Victoria model, which is used a lot in Poser, costs more than that, and she doesn't even come with clothes or many hair props. I can't imagine what the average Poser artist pays for clothes props. Me, I don't even bother -- I usually paint the clothes by hand if I ever use Poser.

So the goal for any Poser artist who can't paint on clothes or a background is volume -- i.e., quantity not quality. To be able to pay for all the Poser stuff that they've bought, they must do as many covers as they can, and I think [some epubs] go for that because they need as many covers as they can get for as little money as they can get away with.

This is not necessarily a bad decision for a small publisher -- perhaps they want to focus their efforts and budget on the editing of the books. So for them, perhaps the Poser artists fit their bill perfectly. Quick, cheap, and doable. Never mind that people don't like their covers; their goal is to put out as many books as they can each week, and to do that, they have to hire artists that are fast and cheap.

Which reminds me, there's a saying about business that one of my bosses once told me. You have the following: Fast, Inexpensive, and Good Quality. But in any one product or service you can have only any two out of the three; you can't have them all.

And there you have it. Yes, the companies churning out such dreadful covers probably know they suck, but you get what you pay for. Let's hope the money's going into the books.

See you next week!

Labels: Workshop Wednesday