cover art for "Servare Vitas" (Bones fic)

[astridv]

Last week I was riding my bike, mulling over a particularly intense chapter of "Servare Vitas" (the Bones fic I've been reading these past weeks; you may have seen me go on and on about mention it) when suddenly inspiration struck. A voice in my head said, no, insisted, You have to make a cover art for this fic! Which is my brain's way of dealing when it's obsessing about something. (Hey, say nothing, I got a diploma thesis out of my X-Files obsesson.)

I suggested it to the author, newscaper, who, to my delight, was into the idea. Voilà, there be cover art:







story on LJ (links to ch1; hit the 'next entry' button to get to the next chapter)
story on fanfic.net

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

this may be a dumb question, but by what methods do you do your art? It looks like a combo of painting and digital to me, but what do i know? ;-) Whatever it is, it's amazing.

-Emily

[astridv.livejournal.com]

I do almost exclusively traditional art (drawing, painting, calligraphy). The main digitizing done in this one was the scope's view, which I had colored in realistic shades then turned blue on my computer. Oh, and I added the crosshair digitally.

I also used Paint Shop Pro to heighten contrasts overall, and for fixing a few details on the faces (because facial expressions are so delicate, it's easy to screw up and with the computer, you can undo the changes, which is handy.)

If you're interested in the process behind it, here's what it the inkwork (http://mitglied.lycos.de/vohwinkel/div/06-sv_cover_ink.jpg) looked like and, one step earlier, here's the basic layout (http://mitglied.lycos.de/vohwinkel/div/05-cover_sketch_3a.jpg).

[(Anonymous)]

definately interested; are you telling me you did the lettering by hand? That's amazing. I can hardly draw a straight line, much less consecutive ones to make letters...very impressed with the overall product.

Emily

[astridv.livejournal.com]

are you telling me you did the lettering by hand?

Oh no, the typography is done by computer in this case. I hand-letter my comics, though.