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Compilation Covers

UseYourIllusionII

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I did not mean I didn't like the text on the first logo, I didn't like how you placed it. Also, if you changed the tint of the yellow on the R2 you could get a yellow that would work very with blue...and if you use a lighter shade of a darker blue, instead of deep dark blue, you can make the pictures stand out on the back.

Also, just because they made his name large in the official poster doesn't mean it looks good...and it just doesn't look good on your R1 cover at all.
 

Daniel

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UseYourIllusionII said:
I did not mean I didn't like the text on the first logo, I didn't like how you placed it.
...
Also, just because they made his name large in the official poster doesn't mean it looks good...and it just doesn't look good on your R1 cover at all.
I was so happy with the R1 once I completed it I thought I couldn't possibly match it with the R2. I did take your advice and slightly reduce the size of Harrison Ford's name - but the reason it's still prominent is that it's a very American thing. If text is too large it's true that it can look unprofessional - but I don't feel that's the case.
Also, if you changed the tint of the yellow on the R2 you could get a yellow that would work very with blue...and if you use a lighter shade of a darker blue, instead of deep dark blue, you can make the pictures stand out on the back.
I've printed the full cover:

brphotonl0.jpg


And shown it to a good friend of mine who is a graphic artist. I asked him specifically what he thought of the background colour - one of the biggest reasons being that I almost made it darker before printing. He said he really like it and it worked very well with the cover. The only details he didn't like was that he thought the photos on the reverse were placed too high - and weren't well enough connected. I disagree with the latter because Blade Runner is not a movie which dumbs-down to the audience, and so I think the connection between the photos doesn't need to be "bleeding obvious clear".

Now contrasty he thought the Exorcist cover was an example of a very clear and obvious link between the two photos - and even this is a bit of a problem for me, because I only used the left face because it linked well, other then that I really didn't like the photo. But still I'm very happy with it.

Blue is a very American colour, and although I hadn't thought of it at the time my friend said another thing he liked about it was it had a subliminal undertone of the traditional "green and gold" Aussie colours, without being at all obvious. The colours marry very well, and I think that as a more European design it holds up, whereas an American audience may not like it as much as if the background was dark blue and the text was the traditional blade-runner red.

I'd like to take this opportunity to go back to the Jurassic Park cover as well (excluding the R1 blade runner I've printed all my covers listed in the first post so far). I'll just compare to the Ric Easton's cover which I really don't like:

rixjphh6.jpg

jurassicpreviewru9.png


My friend also like my Jurassic Park cover, saying he thought the front was perfectly laid out -which I'm glad to hear, considering the effort I went to to ensure that it was - If you remember some of my "WIP" previews I posted I had tried having all the text the same height, but I was resolved to basically using the same ratio as seen on the JP/LW R4 cover.

But I think more importantly, Ric's cover just shows me how awful the African font looks when used with the official logo. The most awful thing is he has the real Jurassic Park text above the logo, and I don't think it works (especially using that awful font!) I don't like what he's done on the back - using the African font there too. The Lost World log is supposed to be cracked, and the Jurassic Park III logo for me doesn't work with the letter "I" instead of the claw swipes. Furthermore there seems to a large number of problems with his full resolution cover - hard edges, low-resolution text blown up way too large without even correcting its slant, or smoothing it better - there's all kinds of trouble with the red especially on the front logo, making me think he didn't smooth out his source the way I did prior to saving the final image (and it's really easy - all I did was take the B&W channel, increase the contrast by 80 or so and then converted the black and white image to red - this removes all original JPEG artefacts - AND you could probably blow the image up 200% from the source and it would still look fantastic when printed).

Still each to their own.
 

Daniel

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My Predator cover is coming along nicely, here's what the front looks like:

ppreviewsx9.jpg
 

UseYourIllusionII

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I would suggest adding more than just the logos (if you're going for another "Star Wars" style cover) or positioning those differently, because so far it looks very boring and won't look good imo just like the Star Wars one doesn't look that good.
 

Daniel

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One of the things I do is to start with what I have, my DVD's look like this:

icpredatorcollectorsedinb1.jpg
icpredator2specialeditibc4.jpg


I like to bring certain things from the original designs into mine - here it's an unusual combination, because both have a similar (essentially the same) red logo on the front; whereas there have been so many different predator logo's used in the DVD releases - and I don't believe the red logo has been used for P1 in Aus, nor P2 in the USA. They also both have a dull greyscale image in the background, which I'm thinking of adopting. The one thing I can't do is use the poster image - because it doesn't go with the red logos -

icdvd2pw9.jpg


That's as far as I've got. I've also begun work on my Terminator 1&2 cover, I've had an idea that will be a bit different from all the retail packaging, while retaining the poster image in all its glory. I have my own scan for T1, but it doesn't have enough detail in the black for me to be happy with, so I'm going with a poster image - this is still an incomplete job, but I've removed most of the text that needs to be gone for the dvd cover:

t1fronteh0.jpg


I may yet have to replace the entire Terminator logo, but I'll decide upon that later. I would like to feature the original photo:

t1photolx0.jpg


If I'm able to find it in high enough quality - but this looks doubtful. It's extremely rare to even find the photos that poster paintings are based on.
 

Daniel

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This is a quick layout test, it's not supposed to represent what the final cover will look like - I'm just looking at how the space marries between the two logos. The current configuration is a little on the low-side (close to the bottom), meaning there really isn't room to add any DVD logo's or anything like that. The T2 logo seems a little large too - and I don't know if there's anything more I can do - I've already squashed it to help it go with the T1 logo a bit better. This is basically a representation of how much space we have to play with, and ultimately what the best use of it will be...

tlayouttestlj0.jpg
 
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