i was really tickled by ThatsWhatHeSaid's book cover ideas. very.. sex-it up. :yim_rolling_on_the_
i like your idea more personally, lots of details and personal. you seem to have lots of cool ideas.
are you using photoshop? i'm not sure if you have a tablet, i feel you were using a mouse because it is kind of circly-blocky intead of like... having that tablet pen more natural pressure. having just a mouse, that will make it difficult to color. but not impossible.
maybe this could inspire you (it was done by someone with just a mouse)
http://www.merekatcreations.com/mere_images/port/piro.jpg
and this too, i think. i can't remember.
http://www.merekatcreations.com/mere_images/port/miho.jpg
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i'll try to offer you tips:
- you don't really need to use smudge tool to make it smoother, you could possibly like make a gradient (darker-lighter/light-dark/color-another color) color and then layer it..,
like
http://i51.tinypic.com/v5a0ec.jpg (sorry for the.. not pro example but i thought it was a good example because it was on a paintchat and they had limited colors and no pen sensivity so me and my friend had to make do. it was like using a mouse) ignore everything but the background.
if you look closely to the night sky, you can ttell where each color begins and ends. ()
it creates an illusion if you layer it like that. i think you were like changing the opacity/flow for the color to make it go lighter-darker at some points, it's not impossible to make it smooth by coloring like that but.. i don't know, to me you you have to kind of guess at the next color.
using the tools like smudge/dodge/blur can actually make it look messy and amateurish. it's actually a rule of thumb that new people should keep away from those tools for that reason or use it sparingly (it's more like, finishing touches)
(but if you have the right idea in mind, you can make it work)
- to make it look more natural looking i would like... thin out the brush/not keep it the same size (do you understand? like size 10~3)
- if you want solid black outlines, like crisp, you might want to learn how to use the pen tool (if you have photoshop)
your cover has got a freshness to it i feel, when you polish it up try not to lose that freshness
***make sure you're saving your art in .png format!!! so the color is lossless. jpeg is like for photographs. though you might have done that just to have it load quicker for us<3. saving in other formats sometimes makes it fuzzy.
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hmm those were all the tips i could think of.. well.. i don't know what to say, but keep adding and working and you'll find your own personal method<3 looking forward to see the end-result.
oh and.. if you weren't using photoshop i might have to figure out some other way how to explain it.. sorry for the lack of brevity.
keep us posted?
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oh right. do you know how to use layers?