[TiH] The Cover Process

So as you guys have likely seen, I have a new story goin' out right now. It's not exactly right to call it a story, though. Talking is Hard is meant to be an exercise so I can practice dialogue, which I've gone on record several times to say is the bane of my writing. But I'm not here to talk about that. Not quite.

I'm here to share the process I typically use when designing story covers.

The above video is not the one showing me editing the cover for Talking, but rather an alternative cover for what may become a series of exercise fics. I've been wanting to share the steps I go through for a while, and have always wanted to submit as close to a speedpaint as I could. Obviously, this isn't a speedpaint, but a speed edit. It's the closest I can manage with my skillset.

The process shown here is nearly identical to the one I used for Talking's cover, seen in full here. It really just goes in steps: choosing an image to edit, deleting the mass of stuff I won't need, erasing the remaining stuff while intentionally digging in to characters and/or props, using lines and curves to reconstitute said characters and props, and throwing in effects for flair. Naturally, there are a ton of other steps I used, and many of the above that I simply repeated constantly, for a cover like Fullmetal's. Compared to that one, this was relatively simple. (It should be, for a 45-minute work time and no crashes.)

~Leo