Thanks for the feedback on the cover of The Boy Next Door. I went back and played with it some more, and learned all sorts of things about the Transform tool in Photoshop. Meet Luna Moth II.
Still not totally in love with one particular element of this, but I think there’s a way around it. I’m working mostly in InDesign, and just determined that there’s a way to pick up part of a picture, put something under it, and then set it down again. Let’s hear it for cutting paths. Quite a lot of my floundering has to do with learning what is the right tool for the job.
But in the meantime, here’s V2 of The Boy Next Door. I wanted the very casual feel, so I changed the type and scruffed up the background. I’ve shared a house with these programs for years and never had need to use them, and now it’s all I can play with.
Dean Wesley Smith has created a monster.
Don’t kill me, but I definitely preferred the way you had your name written on the previous version. I’m just impossible, aren’t I??? 😀
One more suggestion with the title — the “N” in “Next” kind of merges with his knee. If there’s any way to move those two elements further apart, I think it would definitely help the composition.
But as I said previously, I do think it looks quite good already — these are just my nitpicky suggestions 🙂
I love the Trajan font too, but it’s kind of formal-looking here, so I did everything in Candara for the casualness. (No, you aren’t impossible, just highly improbable. ;D) I think I can shove Raymond over a couple of millimeters and get that separation. There’s about 6 layers here, so I can move things independently of one another.
Lovely cover!