| Author |
Topic:
Republic Commando: Order 66
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patchworkz7
Registered:
Mar '04
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Date Posted:
4/25 9:49pm
Subject:
RE: Republic Commando: Order 66
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TalonCard posted:
Is there some kind of law against spectacular, or even halfway decent, book covers in American publishing? We've had a few good ones, but the number of bland anachronistic computer-edited character shots we've seen recently just boggles the mind.
At least Order 66's cover tells a story. It's better than a lot of what we've been getting.
TC
There's a lot of factors involved, and in the case of some of the better covers, that's a direct result of the authors being given a little more say and the artists a little more leeway in what they can do. It'd be interesting to walk through the generation of a cover, and I may ask Karen if she could do that with one of her books (even one of her WW books) on her website or something, because I think people would be fascinated to learn just how many hurdles are involved in getting a decent cover.
First off; you need a decent artist. That sounds like a no-brainer, but in addition to being a good artist, they need to be an artist who can take direction. Which means when the art director tells them that the cover should be the main character, a space ship, and the Oz outback with Uluru in the background, they don't draw the character against the backdrop of a sprawling metropolis with no spaceship in the sky and wearing something horribly inappropriate. Mildly OT: I still laugh when I think of the digression in a Deadpool comic book when writer Cristopher Priest broke the fourth wall to explain that he had no idea why the artist had drawn a dinosaur in the scene and had a giant bubble of exposition as to what was supposed to be on the page.
Second; the art director and art department have very set ideas on what sells. They "know" what they like, and what they like is what they assume the public likes and wants. So when you see a wall of uniform covers staring out at you from the shelves...the art people really think that This is What You Want.
Third; it all has to work with the typography. It's heartbreaking for a cover artist to get a book in and find that some of the painstaking detail they work themselves to death on has just been covered by horrible font choices and too bad lettering placement.
There's much more, and just about every author has a horror story about covers, and the largest thing is that American publishing is a conservative industry. They do not experiment lightly. They will churn out what they believe works in terms of audience appeal and they will keep doing so until they feel a palpable backlash or the art directors change.
Jim
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Original Fiction & essays "Does God Limp?" in HOUSE UNAUTHORIZED http://www.smartpopbooks.com/allbooks/2007.html#house "All Her Suicides" appears in: Vestal Review #31 Winter Issue On Sale Now
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MistrX
Registered:
Jun '06
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Date Posted:
4/27 11:48am
Subject:
RE: Republic Commando: Order 66
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Eh, I like it.
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"The only thing more insane than falsehood is truth."
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Excellence
Registered:
Jul '02
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Date Posted:
4/27 2:52pm
Subject:
RE: Republic Commando: Order 66
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He's staring . . . and yet, not staring.
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My utilisation of complex locution to ask what's more pathetic, fans who worship their
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Tricky
Registered:
Jul '01
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Date Posted:
4/27 10:13pm
Subject:
RE: Republic Commando: Order 66
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Nice cover, but who is it on the cover? I had the same problem trying to figure out who it was on the cover of TC too since I know that Omega squad are all wearing matte black armor & that Delta still have splashes on paint on their greyish white Katarn armor.
These covers, it's sorta like sticking Shaa-Gi, Clone Wars padawan that was squished by General Grievous, on the cover of Luke Skywalker & the Shadows of Mondor, no?
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MistrX
Registered:
Jun '06
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Date Posted:
4/27 10:17pm
Subject:
RE: Republic Commando: Order 66
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Tricky posted:
Nice cover, but who is it on the cover? I had the same problem trying to figure out who it was on the cover of TC too since I know that Omega squad are all wearing matte black armor & that Delta still have splashes on paint on their greyish white Katarn armor.
These covers, it's sorta like sticking Shaa-Gi, Clone Wars padawan that was squished by General Grievous, on the cover of Luke Skywalker & the Shadows of Mondor, no?
Or random X-Wings onto the X-Wing novels. Oh wait...
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Excellence
Registered:
Jul '02
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Date Posted:
4/27 10:25pm
Subject:
RE: Republic Commando: Order 66
- Date Edited:
4/27 10:26pm (1 edits total)
Edited By:
Excellence
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Rebel crests! Don't forget those irritating rebel crests, MistrX, that and X-wing schematics, that seriously had nothing to do with Jaina's girly Dark Journey... 
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My utilisation of complex locution to ask what's more pathetic, fans who worship their
movie actors, or the actors who couldn't give a damn, is more a reflection of my own
superincumbent mental actuity than any circumscribed lexicon. Don't you agree?
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TalonCard
Title: TFN EU Staff
Registered:
Jan '01
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Date Posted:
4/27 10:37pm
Subject:
RE: Republic Commando: Order 66
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I'd like to see some covers that actually draw you into the story. I'm reading Allegiance, and the only thing on the cover is a bunch of stormtroopers. Wouldn't a shot of the stormtroopers standing over the dead body of the ISB officer be more interesting? You'd be asking yourself "What went wrong?" "Why is the Empire killing one of their own?" "What's going on here?" Comic books do it all the time...It seems like a no-brainer...
TC
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Excellence
Registered:
Jul '02
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Date Posted:
4/27 10:45pm
Subject:
RE: Republic Commando: Order 66
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An excellent point, TalonCard. Allegiance was a cover of bubble-headed troopers gawking at you. Repcom's has an emotion to it faint but there. A pity comic issue covers in recent years have gone from truly picturesque to simple motiffs of inside panels. But you can only do what time allows you to do. A very in-demand book artist can be commissioned for up to 50 a year...
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My utilisation of complex locution to ask what's more pathetic, fans who worship their
movie actors, or the actors who couldn't give a damn, is more a reflection of my own
superincumbent mental actuity than any circumscribed lexicon. Don't you agree?
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Lord_Hydronium
Registered:
Jun '02
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Date Posted:
4/27 10:59pm
Subject:
RE: Republic Commando: Order 66
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Now pimping my old cover thread...
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patchworkz7
Registered:
Mar '04
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Date Posted:
4/28 7:04am
Subject:
RE: Republic Commando: Order 66
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ATimson posted:
Rouge77 posted:
This is much uglier than the cover of TC. Seems rather cheap looking to be the cover of a hardcover novel.
Amusing, since this is the first of the covers to be commissioned for the book, instead of being a reuse of concept art for the game!
RC:TC was based on concept art from the game, but it was a completly new painting. It just happened that Karen liked how the troopers looked and asked for modifications to the painting and it became the very excellent cover that saw print.
The final cover is obviously different from the concept art, and the main thing that's similar is the trooper posed in the foreground, but much of the rest is altered to fit the story in TC.
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Original Fiction & essays "Does God Limp?" in HOUSE UNAUTHORIZED http://www.smartpopbooks.com/allbooks/2007.html#house "All Her Suicides" appears in: Vestal Review #31 Winter Issue On Sale Now
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ATimson
Registered:
Nov '03
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Date Posted:
4/28 11:38am
Subject:
RE: Republic Commando: Order 66
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patchworkz7 posted:
RC:TC was based on concept art from the game, but it was a completly new painting. It just happened that Karen liked how the troopers looked and asked for modifications to the painting and it became the very excellent cover that saw print.
The final cover is obviously different from the concept art, and the main thing that's similar is the trooper posed in the foreground, but much of the rest is altered to fit the story in TC.
Really?  My mistake.
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patchworkz7
Registered:
Mar '04
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Date Posted:
4/28 12:04pm
Subject:
RE: Republic Commando: Order 66
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ATimson posted:
patchworkz7 posted:
RC:TC was based on concept art from the game, but it was a completly new painting. It just happened that Karen liked how the troopers looked and asked for modifications to the painting and it became the very excellent cover that saw print.
The final cover is obviously different from the concept art, and the main thing that's similar is the trooper posed in the foreground, but much of the rest is altered to fit the story in TC.
Really? My mistake.
The original concept art picture had the trooper in the foreground with the older style armour, and then they were overlooking either a crashed ship or some sort of metal ruins. The new painting, done from scratch and new sketchs, had the cover as it was, which was the same sort if figure in the foreground with the rest of the squad walking into the woods and a very different colour scheme (the original was all greys and silvers).
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Original Fiction & essays "Does God Limp?" in HOUSE UNAUTHORIZED http://www.smartpopbooks.com/allbooks/2007.html#house "All Her Suicides" appears in: Vestal Review #31 Winter Issue On Sale Now
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Rogue_Follower
Title: Manager: Literature
Registered:
Nov '03
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Date Posted:
4/28 7:36pm
Subject:
RE: Republic Commando: Order 66
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A Closer Look at Order 66
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Trip
Registered:
Dec '03
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Date Posted:
4/28 7:43pm
Subject:
RE: Republic Commando: Order 66
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starwars.com posted:
With Republic forces stretched to the max and casualties mounting, the last thing these beleaguered warriors need to hear is that Chancellor Palpatine is keeping vast armies of secret clone troops in reserve.
... XD
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Lord_Hydronium
Registered:
Jun '02
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Date Posted:
4/28 8:02pm
Subject:
RE: Republic Commando: Order 66
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starwars.com posted:
With Republic forces stretched to the max and casualties mounting, the last thing these beleaguered warriors need to hear is that Chancellor Palpatine is keeping vast armies of secret clone troops in reserve.
Let it go, Indiana.
Let it go.
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And little midis have lesser midis
And so ad infinitum.
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