Affliction cover

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Fresh off LKH's facebook, I present to you the cover for AB:VH 22 -- Affliction



[ source]
I'm still crying in horror at the mess of fonts and alignment on what could be a semi-decent cover. I have no idea why Generic McSillhouette is pasted on one of the fragments, I guess it's to instill ~~mystery and ~~danger or something but okay?

With a title like "Affliction" I probably would have gone down the more plague-related art route. If the Harlequin were still relevant, you can have a lot of fun with Venetian Plague Doctor masks.

But thoughts, fellow lashers? What would you do for this cover instead?

Comments

[the-mome-wrath.livejournal.com]

I don't think that's how you're supposed to do a mud mask... I mean you're supposed to use mud that doesn't have the bodies of tiny people in them right? And you probably don't want the mud that close to your eye either.

I suppose it's better than other covers but either use a font with serifs or a font without serifs. They don't like each other and tend to look messy when placed side by side.

[rebootfromstart.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't have the author's name bigger than the title, for one thing, but that could just be a personal preference.

[shadwing.livejournal.com]

It's a normal trick...LKH mostly sells by name...so of course you want that front and center.

[rebootfromstart.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know it's a normal trick, I just think it looks really tacky :P

[astronauta.livejournal.com]

I read somewhere that they typically make the name larger for the more popular authors who can easily sell any book they write. Stephen King, Mary Higgins Clark, and John Grisham come to mind.

[korax9.livejournal.com]

Ditto here. I know it's marketing, but it's a very cheap marketing trick, which is why it looks cheap. And it becomes confusing when the book title is also a name (not the case here, but I've seen it).

[shadwing.livejournal.com]

Laurel's name...smaller font, its almost on top of the single eye showing.

That Eye SHOULD be the focal point...it's very creepy and striking..but instead, thanks to the layout, it's the model's NOSE that you are drawn too.

[shadwing.livejournal.com]

This makes me think what ever designer they have on these covers is just dialing it in.

Since it is a HUGE noob mistake to make a design that interferes with the layout THIS BADLY. The art should have been resized or re-cropped to ensure that LKH's name would have ample room at the top and the emphisis of the design shows without being covered with type.

If the lips/chin is suppost to be the focal then the eye should have been covered up completely, left as is...it looks sloppy and unprofessional. Like whoever finished the layout didn't care and just wanted it done.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

The more I look at it, the more I think the cracked paint texture looks like it's been put over the face and then someone went "hey an eye looking out would be freaky" and they got part of another face to slot it in. Because the cheekbone does not line up with the contour of the nose/mouth.

I just want to shake whoever made this and weep about text alignment and balance. Because this the opposite.

[cheeky-duckie.livejournal.com]

Yes, that is exactly it. If it weren't for the GIANT NAME I think I'd really like the cover.

[zhiva]

eye? what eye?

I had to scroll back and study the picture for a few seconds before I found it.

[plastraa.livejournal.com]

I don't have an opinion on the cover. BUT I am one of the people who didn't even notice the eye until reading your comment and scrolled back, sure enough there was an eye. Who knew? :-|

[c-l-craft.livejournal.com]

Got to love the blue eyed white person on the cover of a book that's suppose to have a main character who is part Hispanic. Has there actually been any women of color on any of the books? Or at we still playing the whole paler than a pale person thing?

Also the font for the title is bothering me. It's so...plain? Boring, I guess is a better word. Not pretty enough.

[pearkiwi.livejournal.com]

WOC. Hmm, off the top of my head: The one woman who was raising the dead and sticking their souls back in in one of the earlier books, one of the wereleopards was "black via ireland," and I think one of the vamps was chinese.

The first one was evil and is dead, the second was a submissive who was abused by the previous pard leader and is probably still around, and I think the last is dead or moved to another city, because she didn't like Anita much.

Maybe someone else can remember more, it has been a long while since I've read the books. I want to say there were more weres and vampires, but who knows in LKH's world.

[c-l-craft.livejournal.com]

Did they make the cover? I can't remember.

[pearkiwi.livejournal.com]

Nope; I'm fairly sure that it's supposed to be Anita on all the covers, and the cover artist just doesn't care any more. I think that the orginal first few books, with the awesome covers, had a more accurate Anita on them, though (but it's been a really long time so I could be remembering wrong.)

[world-dancer.livejournal.com]

Black Irish is a thing. And is not actually black (ie African). They just tan kind of funny.

Black Irish might actually be Hispanic from people who washed up on shore after the Spanish Armada was destroyed by English clippers. But that's only Hispanic if you're into 1 drop of blood theories.

[hanayanomusume.livejournal.com]

I think pearkiwi was referring to Vivian (http://anitablake.wikia.com/wiki/Vivian) who is described as African-American with some Irish ancestry in the books, not Black Irish. According to the wikia LKH also manages to have YAABI by referring to her as "Vanessa" in KtD. >.

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

Erm...
I... like the lipstick?
I got nothing.
(I just really like dark red lips.)

[ex-naomi-ja.livejournal.com]

I think since Hit List the publishers have been trying to emulate generic thriller covers to try to move away from the "porn without plot" tag. The problem is, the covers are still pretty awful so you don't really get "thriller" or "crappy erotica" either. You just get "WTF?" I like the colour scheme, I guess...The model freaks me out. Is it meant to be Anita? If so, why are her eyes blue?

[fangedsekhmet.livejournal.com]

I dunno, the eye looks like it's placed badly to me for some reason, as if they drew the cracked pieces first and then slotted the nose and eye in afterwards.

[shadwing.livejournal.com]

I think it's because LKH's name pretty much covers the eye. It looks like whomever ok'ed this art didn't insure there was enough room at the top for the size of her name. Which is WIERD since normally artists are given a rough layout with specs on where the authors name/title of the book will be places and at what size/font they will be so there is no overlap.

[astronauta.livejournal.com]

If I didn't know anything at all about this novel and just had this cover, I'd assume this book is about a femme fatale stalking some guy.

[edited for grammar]

[shimmerfox.livejournal.com]

Given Anita? Are you sure that's not what's happening?

[astronauta.livejournal.com]

.. True.

[world-dancer.livejournal.com]

I like the cover depending on what the story is supposed to be about. If Anita is having some sort of power-related illness, becoming more of a sexual predator and is actually going to admit to such being a problem, then this is the right cover, but the head should be smaller so that the font isn't over the eye.

[watersheerie.livejournal.com]

The eye is too big and too close to the bridge of the nose. I know it's not that noticeable with all that shit covering up the rest of the face, but as an artist it was one of the first things I picked up on. To get an idea of how large that eye is, notice how all we see is the iris and pupil. That iris and pupil, along with the heavy brow line right over the top, are already on the large size, now factor in that the blue stuff is still covering up other parts of the eye. That heavy dark line right above the eye, which I'm assuming is the brow line, also arches in a way that makes it look like it's going to go right down the middle of the nose. When drawing a face, the brow line usually arches down to form one side of the nose, when it comes to the tonal value added in, so that the eyes kinda rest in the hollows formed on either side. Technically the average space between both eyes is usually big enough for another eye (measurements are not exact due to the asymmetrical nature of the face and the differences in features across the board, but it's a good form of measurement to use as a guide). The shadows seem to indicate that she has an extremely pronounced brow line, and there are no eyebrows that I can see. All in all this is an extremely lazy depiction of a face.

Usually if you're drawing a face/body with shit covering up pieces, you still sketch out the whole piece so that nothing is out of proportion. I almost feel as if bits of the face were added around the pieces of that blue shit, rather than the whole face being planned out and the blue stuff added on top, which has led to the features looking out of proportion and skewed.

[killiara.livejournal.com]

It makes the face look... inhuman, doesn't it?

Straight into Uncanny Valley.

[katekat]

nicely spotted!!

though i'm pretty sure this is a photoshop disaster instead of an actual drawing - it looks like the upper part of the cheeckbone was relocated too - the cover artist probably got told they had to make the eye more prominent or something and so picked up that part of the face en mass and scooted it over.

[4tonedeaf.livejournal.com]

Except for the pretty blue colour of the bits (paper, mud, paint?) I really don't care for the cover. It doesn't do anything for me. Though it does look like the face is angled downwards, hence the oversized eye? I have no clue.

[zhiva]

The keming. I can't.

Is that a comma after "BLAKE"?

[astronauta.livejournal.com]

It.. definitely looks like a comma (and I even checked out other covers available for this novel). Oh dear.

[fadeinthewash.livejournal.com]

Colons for the oldest covers, commas in all the sexy/edgy ones, I've noticed.