Shoutbox

quote:

---

Originally posted by overlord
insted of spending ur time on making 6 covers or as many as u want u prolly should have been spending all that time trying to make one awesome one when u thought u were making ur chances of winning better ur only making them weaking by doing this now if u wip the slate clean and focus the rest of the time on one entry and actually think about how its gonna be set up even make a few serious sketches and look at other profession covers that r all ready made to help u out

peace

---

its about potential, most of you would agree my first one had very little potential. Instead of keeping working on the dead-end picture it made more sense to start again. I just put it there in case someone wants to see it, i really dont expect my first on to win and i think there was very little i could do to change that. Its not hurting you so suck it up. [/rant]

wut if it is hurting me...wut if i'm crying right now...wut if it does hurt, deep down inside...lol, didn't mean for it to sound that way, sorry

quote:

---

Its not hurting you so suck it up.

---

He's trying to help you out here man, relax.

But since we are doing the multiple entries thing now, I've whipped up 2 more entries for a total of 3. I'm consolidating all of them into the next 3 posts. The 2nd one took ages cos I had to colour the (previously black and white) artwork from the back of the collectors edition case. That took me 2 hours. The last one does away with the black spine altogether.

Now does anybody have a decent render or picture of a blank xbox case so I can post up how they'd look (vaguely) in the real world? I don't have a digital camera or a scanner, and there aren't any pictures of them on the net (at least not where I checked).

1


Anyways this one was my first finalised design. I had pretty much made up my mind that the artwork I was going to use wasn't going to be the standard stuff available on the internet - i had to make my own or heavily modify existing images so they looked like nothing else.

The image of the chief on the front cover is taken from the bungie.net wallpaper "stand tall". I'd wanted an image that looked a lot like the one from the halo 2 ad (the one overlord has sampled - its a beautiful picture), but a little bit brighter and vibrant. I actually ended up making a wallpaper from it, complete with covenant cruisers. The colours also go extremely well with the blue halo 2 logo (I figured that the logo shouldn't be modified at all)

The main image on the back was modified from the original to fit the back of the cover (it was too wide previously). Looking back at the way the original Halo covers were done, the front cover had an extreme focus on the Chief, with the back covers still focussing on the chief, or a vehicle.

2


This one tries to coordinate the colors on the front and back covers, although the same design elements I've used in all 3 entries are still the same. If you note:

1) All 3 entries have the smaller screenshots in a frame of some sort, with a text caption overlaying the image

2) The disclaimer and copyright information, barcode, ratings information and the various little logos never change position. I figured that realistically, thats where all the information would go anyway. I think they have regulations about that sort of stuff (i know they have regulations on placement and size of ratings logos - not sure what they are though).

3) Placement of the Halo 2 logos on the back cover never changes. This is purely because with all the other stuff on the back cover, where are you going to put a logo? Do you really need a huge logo on the back? I know I don't read the back of a game case without at least knowing the title of the game first.

Anyways, the cover image on this one is essentially the back cover of the Halo 2 Deluxe Limited Collectors edition or whatever its called. The only difference between that and the artwork that has been released to the public is that it's in colour. This image took me goddamn ages in photoshop to colour, but the results are great. I wish bungie would release a cityscape or two into their wallpapers section.. i mean, we've seen some vague glimpses of Earth City and New Mombasa in videos and concept art, but never a detailed illustration or render of the city.

Also tried something a little different with the frame here.

3


For future reference, the image of the Covenant cruiser was not taken from anything on the internet or in a magazine. Its the bottom of the Truth and Reconciliation, captured with Fraps over about 2 hours for every little detail. I've got the image on my hard drive to prove it.

This one is markedly different from the other two, because it does away with the black spine, using one large image to cover both the front and back cover. Keep in mind that the cruiser on the back is much much larger in the original image, but scaled back here to fit on the back cover.

I've also included a shot of a warthog (its a bit distorted tho). The strange thing about the back cover is that it has 2 feature shots, the large one of the chief on the left and the hog on the right

I had a few friends ask me how I got the shadow underneath the warthog. I duplicated the layer with the hog on it in photoshop, free transformed/distorted/skewed the image so it looked a little bit more realistic, and then applied a gaussian blur to it.

On a final note - I had a really hard time getting all my text readable on the cover. 750 x 500 pixels is not much room to get a lot of readable text in. The workaround I used involved using Illustrator and Photoshop. I typed up the text in Illustrator, imported it into photoshop at a much larger size, then shrank it down using the "bicbuic smoother/sharper" commands under resize image. It made all the difference. I used the same trick with the ratings, bungie and microsoft logos. I downloaded all of the logos in EPS format off the internet (they are free for public use). The bungie logo was ripped from the Halo PDF manual (its on the front cover). The logos are much sharper than the gif and jpeg ones you can download off a website, plus they have transparent background so no more stuffing around with jagged pixelly edges.

here are my final products:

http://skarz.kaonet.net/hosted/cover1.jpg


http://skarz.kaonet.net/hosted/cover2.jpg


http://skarz.kaonet.net/hosted/cover3.jpg

So it's not as good as I'd like it to be, but I've gotten tired of working on it. So heres my final cover:

Better get those designes wrapped up, there is less than a day and a half left in the contest

What time does the competition close, cause I might have to go to school tomorrow, so I won't know until late day

quote:

---

Originally posted by traxor
What time does the competition close, cause I might have to go to school tomorrow, so I won't know until late day

---

11:59:59 PM forum time but judging is all weekend...