affinity photo Wattpad Cover Preview - Made in style of Stranger Things

[SolidSnake2003]

Here is a preview of a wattpad cover I am working on that is similar to the first poster from Stranger Things:

What do you think? @v_kyr @AffinityJules @carl123 @firstdefence @iconoclast

[iconoclast]

Looks good. There is at first one thing that makes me think. Not that it looks bad, but it is unusual: the lens flares at the top of the poster are darker than the background. Is that somehow intended?

And the dog looks a little bit too inserted. But that is not too important in this case, I think.

I would possibly have placed the spooky house on the right side on the same height level as the house on the left., for a more harmonic composition This looks a little bit messy. But it is not a big problem.

[firstdefence]

Move the dog to the dirt track at the side of the derry signage but don't resize the dog, or to get a sense of scale for the dog, on the gothic door in the forefront the dog would be about as high as the bottom of the lock, else it would be a Dire wolf lol! see Game of Thrones.

[SolidSnake2003]

1 hour ago, iconoclast said:

Looks good. There is at first one thing that makes me think. Not that it looks bad, but it is unusual: the lens flares at the top of the poster are darker than the background. Is that somehow intended?

And the dog looks a little bit too inserted. But that is not too important in this case, I think.

I would possibly have placed the spooky house on the right side on the same height level as the house on the left., for a more harmonic composition This looks a little bit messy. But it is not a big problem.

The lens flares are to show off the power of the two beings in the clouds. One of them is Pennywise/IT, the orange glow represents it's what it calls "deadlights" In the new movie, the deadlights comes out of its mouth which I think looks stupid. So I switched to coming out of the eyes like it does in the 1990s mini-series, since the eyes glow in the new movies as well. The guy in green is a character from the original novel named Maturin who I cast as Tim Curry(the actor that played Pennywise/IT in the 1990 mini-series) who is a benevolent character. The color choice of green is cause it's form in the book is that of a turtle.

24 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

Move the dog to the dirt track at the side of the derry signage but don't resize the dog, or to get a sense of scale for the dog, on the gothic door in the forefront the dog would be about as high as the bottom of the lock, else it would be a Dire wolf lol! see Game of Thrones.

Here is a new preview where I moved the dog and changed the color on the light flares to a brighter color:

Hope you all like it.

[Komatös]

43 minutes ago, SolidSnake2003 said:

Hope you all like it.

The Derry sign looks, to me, too new for the whole area. Let it age a little. Perhaps you could also make the house look a bit creepier from the viewer's point of view on the left.

[SolidSnake2003]

4 minutes ago, Komatös said:

The Derry sign looks, to me, too new for the whole area. Let it age a little. Perhaps you could also make the house look a bit creepier from the viewer's point of view on the left.

How do I age the sign? Sorry never done that type of thing before. Do you mean by making the house look creepier by adding spooky lighting around it?

[iconoclast]

OK, maybe I don't really understand that, but if the lens flares are so dull and weak, what does this say about the powers of the three figures? But it looks a bit better in the last version.

By the way, does this figur "Maturin" point at Charles Robert Maturin, author of "Melmoth the Wanderer", a gothic novel from the 19th century? Do you know anything about it?

[SolidSnake2003]

Just now, iconoclast said:

OK, maybe I don't really understand that, but if the lens flares are so dull and weak, what does this say about the powers of the three figures? But it looks a bit better in the last version.

By the way, does this Figur "Maturin" point at Charles Robert Maturin, author of "Melmoth the Wanderer", a gothic novel from the 19th century? Do you know anything about it?

Not that I know of, cause I don't know that author. Maturin is the name that the turtle has in the original novel. How can I make the lens flares look better? I just used a brush I use in Photoshop Elements as well. Here is a version where I turned off the flare brushes and just have the eyes with a glow effect:

[iconoclast]

I think, I prefer the version without the lens flares. You could possibly make the eyes a little more glowing to emphasize the spooky aspects of those figures. But if you like the lens flares, you could simply duplicate their layers to get them more intensive. Or emphasize their centers.

I read the book "IT" about thirty years ago and saw the TV-movies and the new Hollywood versions, but I can't remember that I ever stumbled upon the name "Maturin". Also the ship's doctor in the movie "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" (Paul Bettany) is called Maturin, and I think that they didn't only pick the name from a telephone book. But it's not important for your project anyway.

[SolidSnake2003]

2 minutes ago, iconoclast said:

I think, I prefer the version without the lens flares. You could possibly make the eyes a little more glowing to emphasize the spooky aspects of those figures. But if you like the lens flares, you could simply duplicate their layers to get them more intensive. Or emphasize their centers.

I read the book "IT" about thirty years ago and saw the TV-movies and the new Hollywood versions, but I can't remember that I ever stumbled upon the name "Maturin". Also the ship's doctor in the movie "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" (Paul Bettany) is called Maturin, and I think that they didn't only pick the name from a telephone book. But it's not important for your project anyway.

I've never read the whole book of IT yet, but I heard in a video or something that Maturin is the one that created the world in the book. He blames it on an upset stomach on that day if I remember the details correctly. What do you mean by emphasize their centers? Do you mean just make them brighter?

[iconoclast]

13 minutes ago, SolidSnake2003 said:

I've never read the whole book of IT yet, but I heard in a video or something that Maturin is the one that created the world in the book. He blames it on an upset stomach on that day if I remember the details correctly. What do you mean by emphasize their centers? Do you mean just make them brighter?

Yes, I heard that too, in a Youtube video. Maturin is an ancient god in shape of a turtle that is mentioned in several tales King wrote.

And yes, brighter centers. If you like, also take a look at Texturelabs.org. They offer some nice lens flares for free as PNGs. You only need to remove their black backgrounds using Affinity's Mix Modes.

[Komatös]

1 hour ago, SolidSnake2003 said:

How do I age the sign? Sorry never done that type of thing before. Do you mean by making the house look creepier by adding spooky lighting around it?

Here is my vision of darkening and ageing.

I used an overlay to age the shield. But you could also recreate weathering and rust with appropriate brushes.

To download my vision of how it could be. However, I have left out the history, as I had tried and rejected a few things.tf_coverart_wattpad_stage01_new-style4_darker .afphoto

[firstdefence]

Try overlaying a grungy texture like flaky paint, like this...

These are the textures I used.

 

The sign clip mask was drawn with the pen tool and the textures were made children of the clip mask.

[SolidSnake2003]

4 hours ago, firstdefence said:

Try overlaying a grungy texture like flaky paint, like this...

These are the textures I used.

 

The sign clip mask was drawn with the pen tool and the textures were made children of the clip mask.

Are those textures you used a free resource that I can use? I just want to make sure they didn't come from a paid resource I don't have.

[SolidSnake2003]

@v_kyr @AffinityJules @carl123 @firstdefence @iconoclast @Dan C Here is a new preview where I have started adding lighting/shadows on the foreground elements, changed the flares, aged up the Derry sign with textures I already had.

Hope you like it

[SolidSnake2003]

@v_kyr @AffinityJules @carl123 @firstdefence @iconoclast @Dan C Here is a new preview where I have adjusted the lighting and the coloring on the foreground elements

Hope you all like it

[firstdefence]

Yes they are free, looking much better now

[SolidSnake2003]

@v_kyr @AffinityJules @carl123 @firstdefence @iconoclast @Dan C Here is a new preview where I have added some fog to the image to give it some dimension.

 

 

Hope everyone likes it.

[iconoclast]

Not bad, but I don't like the lens flares on the left side. They don't look realistic. And I can't recognize Pennywise in this version. And, in my opinion, the shield doesn't need so much fog, because it is the part of the image that is closest to the beholder and should also be readable.

[SolidSnake2003]

6 hours ago, iconoclast said:

Not bad, but I don't like the lens flares on the left side. They don't look realistic. And I can't recognize Pennywise in this version. And, in my opinion, the shield doesn't need so much fog, because it is the part of the image that is closest to the beholder and should also be readable.

What do you think of this?

[iconoclast]

That's better. One thing I already think about for a longer time is, that it would possibly look even a little bit better if there would be a little bit of mist to separate the three kids from the rooftops. but just a little bit, to blend them out to their bottoms. Like they were mountains in the distance. Could be worth a try, but I'm not sure about that. It would possibly look more epic, I think.

[SolidSnake2003]

7 hours ago, SolidSnake2003 said:

What do you think of this?

Here is a new preview where I added the mist around the central characters, and moved them and the foreground down for better Text placement, plus got a temp title up trying to get the ST style down

 

Hope you all like it

[iconoclast]

That's the best version, in my opinion. But I didn't mean mist around the characters. I meant a kind of ground mist. If you see mountains in the distance, depending on the atmospheric conditions, they blend a little bit with the atmosphere. The contrast gets weaker and specially the shadows adapt the colour of the sky (usually blue). That is because there is much more air between the things in the distance than between him and the things near to the spectator. And this mist uses to appear stronger at the bottom, so that you can sometimes only see the peaks of the mountains, as they would fly in the sky.

But in my opinion this version is good. The only thing I don't like is that "Derry welcomes you" is hidden behind the "Twisted Fates"-text, so that you can't really read both texts very good. Similar with the text at the bottom, that has a bad contrast to it's background. Text that is meant to be read should always have a good contrast to it's background and not too many details behind it that disturb and distract the view of the spectator.

[SolidSnake2003]

22 hours ago, iconoclast said:

That's the best version, in my opinion. But I didn't mean mist around the characters. I meant a kind of ground mist. If you see mountains in the distance, depending on the atmospheric conditions, they blend a little bit with the atmosphere. The contrast gets weaker and specially the shadows adapt the colour of the sky (usually blue). That is because there is much more air between the things in the distance than between him and the things near to the spectator. And this mist uses to appear stronger at the bottom, so that you can sometimes only see the peaks of the mountains, as they would fly in the sky.

But in my opinion this version is good. The only thing I don't like is that "Derry welcomes you" is hidden behind the "Twisted Fates"-text, so that you can't really read both texts very good. Similar with the text at the bottom, that has a bad contrast to it's background. Text that is meant to be read should always have a good contrast to it's background and not too many details behind it that disturb and distract the view of the spectator.

Here is a new preview where I moved the Derry Sign down more so its readable, plus updated the bottom text to make it stand out more. Plus I added fog between the left and right houses, but behind the wellhouse. Plus I changed the fonts for the logo.

Hope you like it

[iconoclast]

It looks good in general. The bottom, the text part with the title, the shield and the foot notes), looks a little bit too crowded and diffuse, for my taste. I would at first lighten the foot notes a little bit, for better readability. And I would possibly lift the "IT - Twisted Fates" a bit. Also the red of the "IT" could possibly be a little more saturated or blood like.