Custom Cover Art Thread

[NickMate]

What's a good program to print Bluray covers.? Are there any templates for say MSPAINT or Photoshop.?I want to convert some AUS release to US size cases so i can put the slipcover over them.
Also what's the cheapest place to buy 2 disc/ 1 disc proper cases that ship internationally.??.
Cheers guys

[Nissen]

Originally Posted by FC4L

Is that an actual image of Englund as Freddy on the front? It's jumps out at me like it's someone else in a costume but maybe that's the lower resolution of the hosted image. Otherwise it's a nice clean work. Took me a second to see the ticket stubs in his hand but nice touch.

That is indeed a costume picture for Freddy. I would have avoided it if I could, but the pose was perfect and the mask isn't too cheap looking. I wanted to keep him more in the dark, but it's hard to tell just how dark/light the values will be once printed. This is a happy medium. On the final, printed cover Freddy will be less than 1 inch high, so....

In the interest of full disclosure, here are the images I used to fashion this cover. (I also used some paper textures, not shown.)


At the client's request I used a theater motif for this cover. The challenge was to include the original posters without them hogging the entire front. (It's been done. By me, even). I think the final layout works well. I didn't catch the resemblance to the classic Creepshow poster before the client pointed it out to me.

The actual booth was cobbled together from a photo of someone's work-in-progress home theater. Straightened, warped, portions flipped. I don't think there's any part of it I didn't change. The image was too tiny to really be good for this, and the unpainted plywood needed some finishing. The finished booth was therefore textured with a plank wall photo tiled together. The texture had to be warped to match the perspective of the sides of the booth. Photoshop has great warping and blending options making this possible without building and rendering an actual 3D model. Takes a looooong time, though.
Then I applied gradient shadows and drop-shadows by eye to make it appear lit in 3D space. This is where my illustration and drawing background comes in handy.

I also had to re-arrange elements of the Nightmare 3 poster to match the dimensions of the Nightmare 2 poster. This is the sort of work that takes a long time to do but will go practically unnoticed. A weathered paper texture was then applied and some weathering to the edges done by hand.

Freddy himself had to be isolated from the background, and I had to repaint the top of his hat. There's a lot of blending and lighting effects going on, to make him appear backlit, while his arm and the tickets appear to be coming out of the light. Notice the staggered drop-shadow of his arm and fingers, manipulated to appear to warp over the corrugated surface of the windowframe. A lot of work went into this cover, I tell you.

Also at the client's request, two ticket stubs were included. The ticket stubs were a plain stock photograph, textured with some crumpled paper and weathered a little at the edges. Hand-drawn dropshadows and gradients make them appear to be part of the original photo.

The roller blind is from an online catalog, warped, shortened and blended to appear backlit as well. It obscured some of my hard work to fix parts of Freddy's hat cropped out of the original photo. Still, it had to overlap him a bit to anchor it in 3D space.

The Nightmare logo was taken from a PDF of the Nightmare 3 press-kit. I replaced some of the lettering with Serif Gothic on the back and spine. but elected to keep the original on the front to separate it from the titles of the films below.

The brick wall was stitched together from a seamless texture, multiplied by at least 16 and then stretched to make the bricks more elongated. There's a grunge texture and weathered wall texture blended onto it. Again, several gradient shadows in different directions makes it dimensional. A hue effects layer changed the colour from brick to bluish, more in keeping with the established look of the Nightmare promotional material. (As opposed to Halloween's brownish, gold hues.) As always, I use a spanning background to tie the front, spine and back together.

The back "posters" were made with stock paper textures (I always blend at least two before I'm satisfied) and then warped and weathered. The dropshadows were rendered and warped individually. A few lighting effects give the lifted parts dimensionality, though subtle.
I used two Australian newspaper ads for the movies, but cloned out references to other movies on them.
The top element is the marquee of the "Michigan" theatre, from a photo I found online (not shown). The border is a stock element. Notice both films are in "Widescream".

The legal text was all retyped to match what's on the official cover. Logos and ratings also match. I even included the websites.

The placement of the blu-ray and Warner logo are unchanged from the template, so this cover won't stick out when placed next to actual Warner titles on the shelf.

All in all, I think I spent 20-24 hours on this cover alone. (Most covers take me 4 to 6 hours.)

[DrrnHarr]

Originally Posted by nickmate

What's a good program to print Bluray covers.? Are there any templates for say MSPAINT or Photoshop.?I want to convert some AUS release to US size cases so i can put the slipcover over them.
Also what's the cheapest place to buy 2 disc/ 1 disc proper cases that ship internationally.??.
Cheers guys

I use Undercover XP...it's a free program downloadable off the Internet.

[NickMate]

Originally Posted by DrrnHarr

I use Undercover XP...it's a free program downloadable off the Internet.

ok, it asks me to load left and right images (i suppose these means front and back). do i need to split the cover first?

EDIT* never mind, i worked it out. cheers mate

[DrrnHarr]

Originally Posted by nickmate

ok, it asks me to load left and right images (i suppose these means front and back). do i need to split the cover first?

EDIT* never mind, i worked it out. cheers mate

No, (just for those who might have the same question) you load one cover in the left box and (if printing two covers) load a second custom cover in the right box. You can drag and drop the images into the appropriate box. YOu then select if you want the left or right, or both images printed.

Make sure that you select the "Blu-ray" option and Undercover XP sizes the image you dropped into the correct printing dimensions for a Blu-ray cover. It then comes out of the printer perfectly sized so all you need to do is cut off the edges and voila - a correctly sized Blu-ray cover.

I always check the box for crop marks because if you have a custom cover with white edges (as many of my custom covers have) you can still tell where the edges are when cutting off the edges.

I would also recommend using a commercial cutter (like the ones at Kinko's) to ensure straight edges. Luckily, printing is part of my companies business so we have paper cutters superior to those used by Kinko's (but also a lot more expensive) but many people who have used the Kinko's machines seem to find them adequate

No worries, when I first looked into custom covers printing them to the correct size was always a headache (until I discovered Undercover XP).

[DrrnHarr]

Originally Posted by Torrente

Hey marvellous job on High Road!!!

And about your Harrison Ford collection did you try something like that for your texts?
I think it would improve them visually and they will be more clear.

Hi Torrente,

Whenever I try and open the link I just get a box with a red cross in it.

[Torrente]

Strange... and sorry about that

Here was the pic:

[Show spoiler]

[bsmith6470]

Originally Posted by Imrahil2001

Ah. If you have a scan, crop that and make it black on white, then try uploading it to whatthefont.com.

I tried that, but I used a scan I found of the internet. Didn't work. I will scan it myself and give it a try.

[NickMate]

Cheers mate. Figured out how to work it. I've got a straight cutter, not the best but get it right and it's fine. Just need my printer to print it out nice
Thanx mate

Originally Posted by DrrnHarr

No, (just for those who might have the same question) you load one cover in the left box and (if printing two covers) load a second custom cover in the right box. You can drag and drop the images into the appropriate box. YOu then select if you want the left or right, or both images printed.

Make sure that you select the "Blu-ray" option and Undercover XP sizes the image you dropped into the correct printing dimensions for a Blu-ray cover. It then comes out of the printer perfectly sized so all you need to do is cut off the edges and voila - a correctly sized Blu-ray cover.

I always check the box for crop marks because if you have a custom cover with white edges (as many of my custom covers have) you can still tell where the edges are when cutting off the edges.

I would also recommend using a commercial cutter (like the ones at Kinko's) to ensure straight edges. Luckily, printing is part of my companies business so we have paper cutters superior to those used by Kinko's (but also a lot more expensive) but many people who have used the Kinko's machines seem to find them adequate

No worries, when I first looked into custom covers printing them to the correct size was always a headache (until I discovered Undercover XP).

[marty2010]

could someone please help me out with a nice custom cover for Super 8?
The original one is just absolutely hidious!
Thanx!

[FC4L]

Nissen, great write-up. Goes to show just how much work can be put into some of these covers by some very skilled artists. I find the best compliment to any work is when someone has no clue you didn't just "borrow" a photo from the internet and paste it in with MSPaint. When you have invested that much time and energy, as well as creativity, that it seems to simple to most is just awesome.

I've put a lot of time into the posters I've created with all sorts of little flourishes and items that require a closer inspection to see and when they are picked out by someone I definately feel awesome inside. My current project has me a bit boggled though. Creative block can be suck a pain sometimes.

[DrrnHarr]

I felt gipped (sp?) when Warner released “Where Eagles Dare” and “Kelly’s Heroes” as a double feature and hated the poor effort they did on the cover for one of my favorite childhood movies.

Thankfully Warner did see fit to put the movies on two separate discs, which affords me the perfect opportunity to single out this movie for a custom cover. A movie, which I would make a point of watching whenever it appeared on British TV growing up, has some great available poster art.

Which is where this post comes in - I am torn between two front cover posters. The back is pretty much set since I quite like that image but I feel it fits the back of a Blu-ray more than the cover.

The first attempt however seems a little bit too bright and clashes with the spine. I thought about switching out the lighter blue on the cover with a darker blue but that seems like it would be incredibly time consuming – what do people think? (I am aware that I have not finished removing some of the text):




The alternate is a lot darker and for that reason probably fits better:



Thoughts?

Note to Nissen: I know that Warner holds the rights to the movie since MGM sold its pre-1970 film library to Ted Turner in the early 1990s (the ensuing litigation between Cubby Broccoli and MGM to stop the 007 movies being part of the deal was the reason there was a 6 year gap in 007 movies (1989-95). However, the movie was originally an MGM release so my custoim is reflecting that.

[Mr. Movie Fan]

Anybody make one for the extra-deluxe "The Ten Commandments". the Big box really pisses me off...

[DrrnHarr]

I tried to use a gothic font for the TT to mimic the main credits on the actual movie. I could not get that to work so I stuck with the DVD TT. Now, I am trying to decide if I want photos below the castle on the back cover or a synoposis.

A colleague from work came over for dinner the other night and we drove my girlfriend and his wife nuts quoting lines from this movie. As such a synoposis seems like such a waste of valuable real estate:

[jimjimmyjones85]

Originally Posted by DrrnHarr

I tried to use a gothic font for the TT to mimic the main credits on the actual movie. I could not get that to work so I stuck with the DVD TT. Now, I am trying to decide if I want photos below the castle on the back cover or a synoposis.

A colleague from work came over for dinner the other night and we drove my girlfriend and his wife nuts quoting lines from this movie. As such a synoposis seems like such a waste of valuable real estate:

This is such a welcome addition. I agree that the pictures below will look just right. But some small synopsis or quotes to the right and left of the image on the back would also be welcome.

I think maybe going a touch smaller on the front font would look better as it would allow it to be all in the snow of the image and not flow into the blue.

I like the MGM logo.

Not 100% sold on the Burton image. I would have liked a Nazi Eastwood image.

[DrrnHarr]

I'm not sure Eastwood works on the spine.

Adjusted the Where Eagles Dare TT though it is still over part of the blue.

Followed advice not to bump the photos on the back up against the spine.

I came up with a compromise for those who might want a synoposis. Personally, when I come to print my cover I am going to drop it entirely:

[bsmith6470]

Hey all! I haven't posted a cover in awhile, so here is my take on Kill Bill for both volumes. Constructive criticism welcome.

[Rusty100]

Originally Posted by bsmith6470

Hey all! I haven't posted a cover in awhile, so here is my take on Kill Bill for both volumes. Constructive criticism welcome.

The random blood spatters look quite bad, and it has no sense of composition. i would start again.

[Matt.English]

Originally Posted by DrrnHarr

I'm not sure Eastwood works on the spine.

Adjusted the Where Eagles Dare TT though it is still over part of the blue.

Followed advice not to bump the photos on the back up against the spine.

I came up with a compromise for those who might want a synoposis. Personally, when I come to print my cover I am going to drop it entirely:

[Show spoiler]

That looks great! I'd love to get a copy of that for my collection. Any plans to do Kelly's Heroes?

[DrrnHarr]

Originally Posted by Matt.English

That looks great! I'd love to get a copy of that for my collection. Any plans to do Kelly's Heroes?

Thanks. I upload all my covers to EuphoricFX.

Post five messages in their forums and users get 10 free uploads every day. The "Where Eagles Dare" cover will be posted in the next couple of days.

No plans for "Kelly's Heroes" but that's probably just a matter of time.