Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Covers
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LittleCoolDude
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LittleCoolDude wrote:QUOTE (LittleCoolDude @ Aug 8 2011, 10:12 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>no offence ark but RRJR did say move Don over first OR reduce the size, not sure it warranted a rant :P
I'm not offended Frenchie and i'm ok with the 'move Don' suggestion. I'm not ok with 'reduce the barcode size', 'cause it's something i don't agree with. What bugs me is the fact that people are always complaining about barcodes. But i don't wanna start another discussion about this again, let's move on
Thanks Sxxo, and of course not, Mickey is my favorite 
I'm replacing him with a different image that better suits the composition. I'll do my best on the the front keyart with Kernie's suggestions. I feel that this front will really push my skills further but I will need some(a lot of) help 
I have some other news, I start college at UNM near the end of the month, I'm really excited but I can only work on covers a little bit at a time
Oh and for those who are wondering my major is Media Arts.
I'm replacing him with a different image that better suits the composition. I'll do my best on the the front keyart with Kernie's suggestions. I feel that this front will really push my skills further but I will need some(a lot of) help I have some other news, I start college at UNM near the end of the month, I'm really excited but I can only work on covers a little bit at a time
Oh and for those who are wondering my major is Media Arts.My gallery: HERE
Front looks okay... good start... interested to see where you take it.
As for the back...
1) The leading (line-spacing) on the synopsis is too much and the text box gets too close to both edges.
2) The stills just seem plopped on there to fill space. In my opinion, they're unnecessary... you've got a great pic along the top, I think that's all the imagery that the back needs. The rest can be done with text only... if done right, it could look really classy!
3) Losing the stills will give you more room to play around with the critic quote. The quote is too crammed and the synopsis text is too spaced out, it's rather unbalanced.
4) Put everything that's inside the white metal box along the same angle as the top edge of the box. Helpful tip: you can design it all perfectly horizontal, select all the layers that go inside the box, create a Smart Object, and rotate the smart object to match the box's angle. Then you can re-open the Smart Object, which will display everything un-rotated and edit the text, save the Smart Object, and it will revise the smart object while keeping the rotation. The other nice thing about Smart Objects... you can see the exact rotation angle and scaling in the Transform toolbar!
Sorry if it seems like I'm picking it apart, but you've got a great start on the back, and to be perfectly honest, I think all the recent changes to the back are going in the wrong direction...
As for the back...
1) The leading (line-spacing) on the synopsis is too much and the text box gets too close to both edges.
2) The stills just seem plopped on there to fill space. In my opinion, they're unnecessary... you've got a great pic along the top, I think that's all the imagery that the back needs. The rest can be done with text only... if done right, it could look really classy!
3) Losing the stills will give you more room to play around with the critic quote. The quote is too crammed and the synopsis text is too spaced out, it's rather unbalanced.
4) Put everything that's inside the white metal box along the same angle as the top edge of the box. Helpful tip: you can design it all perfectly horizontal, select all the layers that go inside the box, create a Smart Object, and rotate the smart object to match the box's angle. Then you can re-open the Smart Object, which will display everything un-rotated and edit the text, save the Smart Object, and it will revise the smart object while keeping the rotation. The other nice thing about Smart Objects... you can see the exact rotation angle and scaling in the Transform toolbar!
Sorry if it seems like I'm picking it apart, but you've got a great start on the back, and to be perfectly honest, I think all the recent changes to the back are going in the wrong direction...
Okay, so here's a brief tut to illustrate what I'm talking about with Smart Objects...
You have your back cover and we want to rotate everything within the white metal box so that is follows the box's angle. We could just select all the layers (or group them, or link them) and rotate them, but we do an arbitrary Free Rotate and we don't know exactly how much of an angle we actually rotated the layers, we just "eyeball" it. Then, we decide that we want to add something else, say a caption below a still, or underline the critic quote, or just add some other design element that we now want to rotate at the same angle... the problem is, we just did a Free Rotate and we don't remember the exact rotation or angle. In my experience, it's very difficult to try to adjust another element along the exact same angle as another, I can usually get it close, but if not done right, it can look awkward in your design.
Here's where Smart Objects are great... first off, they remember the transform properties of a layer (scale, rotate, skew, etc. although I don't know if they remember distort or perspective), and they allow the designer to "open" the contents of the layer in a new window for editing (very helpful on my Comic Collection covers, where the back is all on an angle).
Let's give more of an example on how to set it up...
Here's your back cover... let's select the stills, critic quote, and synopsis layers. Go to Layer > Smart Objects > Convert to Smart Object.
[attachment=16845:01.jpg]
In your Layers palette, all of these layers are now condensed into one layer, but you've got a nifty little icon on that layer that indicates that it is a Smart Object.
[attachment=16846:02.jpg]
Now, let's rotate the Smart Object to match the angle of the white metal box (Ctrl-T [PC] or Apple-T [Mac] to begin Transform. You can do this by entering numbers into your Transform toolbar, or by grabbing the bounding box of the layer, but rotate the layer to match the angle of the box. You can see by my setting that the angle is roughly 2.2 degrees (and I scaled the layer down to 95% to get the edges of the box away from the edges of the cover). Another reason Smart Objects rock? If you scale a Smart Object down to 20%, then later decide you liked it better at 95%, you can scale it back up and it won't pixelate - PS remember the full-size data within the Smart Object so you can go back to 100% scale, 0-degree rotations whenever you want... quite handy at times! Just remember, scaling it above 100% will pixelate the image... those original raster rules still apply. You can't get blood from a stone, and you can't get any larger than the original image resolution without pixelation.
Anyway... here's what your Transform toolbar might look like as you Rotate and Scale the Smart Object...
[attachment=16847:03.jpg]
But wait... now you want to edit the text in the Smart Object... pretend you have a typo or just want to bold the character names or something. Double-click the Smart Object icon on the layer in the Layers palette. You might get a pop-up window reminding you that you must File > Save any changes made to the Smart Object for the changes to take effect. You can choose to Don't Show Again, but I always leave it up as a good reminder (why not?). After hitting OK on the pop-up box, you'll see something like this...
[attachment=16848:04.jpg]
The checkerboard background indicates transparency (although depending on your individual PS Preferences, it might be White, Black, or some other color). I like to leave the checkerboard so that I know what will "drop out" on my actual cover file. Anyway... make your text change (or delete a photo or add something else, whatever...) and Save. Close this window when you're done, you should be taken back to your original cover layer, and you should see that the change you made has applied. In this case, I deleted the stills...
[attachment=16849:05.jpg]
You might be thinking, "I don't need to use Smart Objects, I can remember rotations if I use a simple number like 5 degrees and I can just as easily delete the stills without them being within a Smart Object." You'd be right, but Smart Objects have come in handy a number of times for me, and it's hard to describe their usefulness until you start using them, but they have certainly been a huge help on my covers (the Comic Book Collection, Community, Three Kings, Jennifer's Body, True Blood, etc.) in a variety of ways.
I hope this is enough to get you started and playing around. That's the best way to learn... play around and see what you can do with the new tool. Good luck with it... looking forward to your next update (and maybe a finished cover eventually?).
EDIT: And I second Felipe's idea about grunging up the box a little!
You have your back cover and we want to rotate everything within the white metal box so that is follows the box's angle. We could just select all the layers (or group them, or link them) and rotate them, but we do an arbitrary Free Rotate and we don't know exactly how much of an angle we actually rotated the layers, we just "eyeball" it. Then, we decide that we want to add something else, say a caption below a still, or underline the critic quote, or just add some other design element that we now want to rotate at the same angle... the problem is, we just did a Free Rotate and we don't remember the exact rotation or angle. In my experience, it's very difficult to try to adjust another element along the exact same angle as another, I can usually get it close, but if not done right, it can look awkward in your design.
Here's where Smart Objects are great... first off, they remember the transform properties of a layer (scale, rotate, skew, etc. although I don't know if they remember distort or perspective), and they allow the designer to "open" the contents of the layer in a new window for editing (very helpful on my Comic Collection covers, where the back is all on an angle).
Let's give more of an example on how to set it up...
Here's your back cover... let's select the stills, critic quote, and synopsis layers. Go to Layer > Smart Objects > Convert to Smart Object.
[attachment=16845:01.jpg]
In your Layers palette, all of these layers are now condensed into one layer, but you've got a nifty little icon on that layer that indicates that it is a Smart Object.
[attachment=16846:02.jpg]
Now, let's rotate the Smart Object to match the angle of the white metal box (Ctrl-T [PC] or Apple-T [Mac] to begin Transform. You can do this by entering numbers into your Transform toolbar, or by grabbing the bounding box of the layer, but rotate the layer to match the angle of the box. You can see by my setting that the angle is roughly 2.2 degrees (and I scaled the layer down to 95% to get the edges of the box away from the edges of the cover). Another reason Smart Objects rock? If you scale a Smart Object down to 20%, then later decide you liked it better at 95%, you can scale it back up and it won't pixelate - PS remember the full-size data within the Smart Object so you can go back to 100% scale, 0-degree rotations whenever you want... quite handy at times!
Just remember, scaling it above 100% will pixelate the image... those original raster rules still apply. You can't get blood from a stone, and you can't get any larger than the original image resolution without pixelation.Anyway... here's what your Transform toolbar might look like as you Rotate and Scale the Smart Object...
[attachment=16847:03.jpg]
But wait... now you want to edit the text in the Smart Object... pretend you have a typo or just want to bold the character names or something. Double-click the Smart Object icon on the layer in the Layers palette. You might get a pop-up window reminding you that you must File > Save any changes made to the Smart Object for the changes to take effect. You can choose to Don't Show Again, but I always leave it up as a good reminder (why not?). After hitting OK on the pop-up box, you'll see something like this...
[attachment=16848:04.jpg]
The checkerboard background indicates transparency (although depending on your individual PS Preferences, it might be White, Black, or some other color). I like to leave the checkerboard so that I know what will "drop out" on my actual cover file. Anyway... make your text change (or delete a photo or add something else, whatever...) and Save. Close this window when you're done, you should be taken back to your original cover layer, and you should see that the change you made has applied. In this case, I deleted the stills...
[attachment=16849:05.jpg]
You might be thinking, "I don't need to use Smart Objects, I can remember rotations if I use a simple number like 5 degrees and I can just as easily delete the stills without them being within a Smart Object." You'd be right, but Smart Objects have come in handy a number of times for me, and it's hard to describe their usefulness until you start using them, but they have certainly been a huge help on my covers (the Comic Book Collection, Community, Three Kings, Jennifer's Body, True Blood, etc.) in a variety of ways.
I hope this is enough to get you started and playing around. That's the best way to learn... play around and see what you can do with the new tool. Good luck with it... looking forward to your next update (and maybe a finished cover eventually?).
EDIT: And I second Felipe's idea about grunging up the box a little!
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Last edited by Kernie on Wed Aug 10, 2011 12:34 am, edited 1 time in total.
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