Cover Reveal
The cover’s done. It was an interesting evolution. If you’re looking for plot or characters, this isn’t the post for you. It hopefully shows the evolution of a cover from simplistic ideas to a finished, professional product.
I learned a lot, most importantly that while I’ve got some very small graphics skills, and initially was going to create my own, there’s nothing like having a professional. Here was my first swag, a mishmash of visual ideas, just to generate ideas.
Many collective groans came of this (folks, it was not supposed to be a real cover!), so I signed Gudrun up to make sense of this, and she came up with a few thoughts based on it:
For a European artist to do the research on creating an Austin skyline impressed the heck out of me. More on that later. While the badge shape with the Start of David was more on the nose than Gudrun realized, it was too prominent. Also, the tiger’s important, but only at the beginning of this crazy romp.
Busy, Great colors, nice background of Austin (still) and good font set. Shmuley was still too frum (religious)-looking, and I was concerned about using an actual person’s face.
Even busiererer. Pumped up the married part (he is, it’s important, but…just no, for the cover). I did like the walking man. Progress, moving forward… Time for another round.
It had a lot of things I wanted, except Shmuley’s hats & coat weren’t accurate to his religious affiliation. We closed on the fonts. Then we looked at the entire jacket:
I wanted the spine to be clearer, but, more importantly, this novel takes place in an alternate history, so I needed to remove the newer buildings, and add a chunk of tenements. So I sent off this:
Gudrun’s freaking magical:
So here we are: a cover that’ll not just be good for A Day at the Zoo, but be the basis for follow-on books in the series.