Wednesday Flourish: Tempest

Happy Hump Day Everyone!

I'm really excited today to reveal the cover for the third book in the Wings of War series by Karen Ann Hopkins, Tempest. I'm not going to say very much about our process in developing this third cover because I'm going to be doing a cover evolution post with Tempest on Friday, so you'll get to see the step by step process there:)

Before I share the cover though, here's a quick reminder of the first two books, Embers and Gaia:

Each of the books in this series focuses on a different element, with protagonist Ember learning how to wield fire in Embers and control earth in Gaia, so Karen and I wanted the wings to reflect the focal element of each book. What's the element for Tempest you ask? You might have an inkling based on the title. WATER. And this cover is definitely my favorite of the series, so I hope you guys love it as much as Karen and I do!

Ember must stop the apocalypse from happening, but at what cost?

The Angels of destruction have arrived, and only Ember stands in the way of their mission to carry out God’s wrath and annihilate His enemies.

When the barrier between celestial creatures and humans beings is broken and Angels descend to Earth, Ember soon learns there’s a fine line between good and evil. As she faces a world full of monsters and magic, a terrifying darkness rises and threatens to destroy everything she’s fighting for.

In the riveting third installment of The Wings of War series, Ember and her friends embark on an epic journey, where unlikely allies are forged and age-old beliefs crumble to dust. And just when Ember accepts love in her life, it’s ripped away from her in the most terrifying way possible.

Goodreads

Tempest releases late January 2016

Find Embers:

Goodreads • Amazon • B&N

Find Gaia:

Goodreads • Amazon • B&N

Cover Evolution: Gaia

Hi Everyone!

Some of you might remember a post I did a couple months ago where I walked through the cover design process for City of Fae, and since that seemed to be something everyone enjoyed seeing, I thought I would make it a semi-regular feature here on the blog :)

Today I'm sharing the cover evolution for Gaia, the newest installment of the Wings of War series by Karen Ann Hopkins. This series is always a trickier one for me in terms of the technical aspect of the design, as my background is heavily InDesign-based–my comfort zone being flat graphic illustrations and typography–so covers that require a lot of Photoshop manipulation are more intimidating for me from the start. There's nothing I love more than a challenge though, and I've had such fun bringing Embers and Gaia to life!

Karen wanted a more epic feel to Gaia, moving Ember out of the woods of the first installment and putting her in a more sprawling landscape that really spoke to the scope of the book. Here is the original, raw image.

Given this book focused on Ember's exploration of the earth element, Karen wanted it to be bright and vibrant with a bold use of color, so I think she was probably somewhat concerned when I told her I thought this image would work best from the initial group I sent her. The color is obviously drab and dull, but I thought it gave us the epic feel she was looking for, and it would allow for Ember to quite literally be standing on a precipice. We just needed a little color:

Color is one of the easier adjustments to make in Photoshop, so I added a series of layers to give the cover the vibrancy we wanted while ensuring it had an ominous quality as well since things get darker for Ember throughout the book.

The next step was to add Ember herself to the image, and it was by far the most challenging aspect of this design. The primary concern for me when compositing images together is lighting. The image we're taking the figure from (the source image) needs to match the image we're moving it to (the destination image) in terms of lighting or it's going to look digitally manipulated in the worst possible way.

I like to stick to studio shots of people rather than environmental shots when doing a more realistic composite, as the lighting is usually even overall instead of coming from one specific direction and creating harsh highlights or shadows. Since my background image above has a very muted quality–no sun to create directional shadows–the even tone of a studio shot is ideal (but not perfect, as you'll see below).

Here's the raw image of Ember:

While she looks great against the white, when I cut her out and added her to my existing background, you can see a number of problems arose:

She couldn't look less like she belongs in this environment, and instead is simply floating above the grass looking ridiculously out of place. In order to make the composition more seamless, I darkened her figure, added a shadow underneath her, and took some of the blades of grass and laid them over the heels of her boots so she would appear as though she was actually a part of the landscape around her. I also added some green highlights to her so she would look like she was lit by the glow of the wings when those came into play next.

The final step before adding the copy was to give her wings. As mentioned in the cover reveal, Ember explores her ability to control a different element in each book, so I wanted the wings to reflect the specific element central to each installment. I started with just a flat illustration of the wings that I'd drawn in InDesign:

Since Gaia sees Ember learning to harness the Earth element, I wanted to build the wings out of various leaves and branches and really make them a focal point. I started with a couple leaf and bark textures as a foundation, and then threaded 3 different types of branches in and through the illustration before finishing with a subtle glow around both wings.

So close! The last step was to add one last layer of color as well as the title, series title, Karen's name and the tagline, and then we had our finished cover:

Wednesday Flourish: Gaia Cover Reveal + Giveaway

Today I'm more than a little excited to be a part of the cover reveal for Gaia by Karen Ann Hopkins, the second book in her paranormal YA Wings of War series. I've had the pleasure of working on several projects with Karen, and I have more and more fun each time.

I've found that designing for sequels is far trickier than designing for book one (much as writing them would be I'm sure) because I have to create something new but still make sure it fits within the aesthetic established in the previous design. I absolutely adored the cover for Embers, so I spent a long time staring at a blank page trying to figure out how to make Gaia equally successful (to me) while ensuring it checked all the Wings of War design boxes.

Karen is someone who always has a clear idea of what she's looking for in her covers, pointing me in the right direction and then letting me take her must-have imagery and run with it. Since protagonist Ember's control over one of the elements is a focal point of each book (fire for Embers and earth for Gaia), I wanted to make sure that element was prominent and instantly recognizable in the design. It's possible I love the cover for Gaia even more than Embers, and I hope you guys love it as well!

GAIA

Watchers and Angels are at war. Which side will Ember choose?

As the apocalypse draws near, Demons are becoming bolder and Watchers are joining forces to fight them. But the Watchers have their own agenda, one that defies Biblical scripture. They don’t want the rapture to happen, making them enemies of the Celestial Host.

Against her own better judgment and an impassioned plea from a higher being, Embers stays true to her first mentor, seeking out a powerful earth Watcher to continue her supernatural lessons. Ember has had a glimpse into the future and knows what’s coming. She is being forced to develop her powers as quickly as possible, to fight the dark forces that are spreading across the earth. Heaven’s sentinels have abandoned their posts to prepare for war. And the walls between the planes of existence are weakening. But who can Ember trust? Her guardian and lover is a Demon. Her best friend is a growler. And her mentor is a psychopath. Humankind is on the precipice; at the end of times. As Ember struggles with morality, she soon discovers that there’s something more frightening than anything she’s faced before.

Goodreads 

Excited about Gaia? Then be sure and sign up to be a part of the blog tour in August! 

EMBERS

There are descendants of angels walking among us. Ember is one of them. And she may be the only hope mankind has as the rapture approaches and evil rises.

Embers is an epic paranormal adventure about an eighteen year old girl who discovers that she's immune to fire and any other injury when she’s in a horrific car crash that kills her parents. Following a violent episode with her aunt's boyfriend, Ember flees Ohio to live with an old relative in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. Ember's exuberance at escaping a bad home life soon turns to trepidation when she finds out that she's a Watcher, a descendant of angels. While Ember learns about her heritage and the powers that go along with it, she strikes up friendships with two young men who live in a frightening walled compound in the forest. Inexplicitly drawn to one of the men in particular, an impossible romance develops. But it is cut short when Ember discovers that her new friends are fighting on the opposite side of a war—one that’s been raging between two factions of Watchers for thousands of years. When the compound’s inhabitants threaten the townspeople, Ember takes action, sealing her fate in the ancient battle of good versus evil—and the grayness in between. Ember is up to the challenge, until she realizes that she isn’t only fighting for the lives of the locals and the souls of her new friends. She also might be one of the few champions who will make a stand for all of mankind as the rapture approaches and the end of days begin.

Embers is a dark and gritty YA novel that’s the first book in the series, The Wings of War.

Goodreads • Amazon

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KAREN ANN HOPKINS

Karen Ann Hopkins resides in northern Kentucky with her family on a farm that boasts a menagerie of horses, goats, peacocks, chickens, ducks, rabbits, dogs and cats. Karen's main job is home schooling the kids, but she finds time to give riding lessons, coach a youth equestrian drill team, and of course, write. She was inspired to create her first book, Temptation, by the Amish community she lived in. The experiential knowledge she gained through her interactions with her neighbors drove her to create the story of the star-crossed lovers, Rose and Noah.

Karen grew up about a mile from Lake Ontario in Upstate New York. She was bitten by the horse bug at the age of five, and after diligently taking riding lessons for several years, was rewarded with her first horse when she turned eleven. The feisty horse's name was Lady, a Quarter Horse-Thoroughbred cross, who became Karen's steadfast companion. Through the years, the constant force in her life was horses. Eventually, she found her place as a riding instructor herself. Before accepting her fate in the barnyard, she worked a short stint as a paralegal, traveled abroad, and guided tourists on horseback riding tours in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee.

Karen is currently working on her Amish mystery series, Serenity's Plain Secrets, along with the YA paranormal/fantasy series, The Wings of War.  Karen is also excited to announce the Temptation series has been optioned for TV by Pilgrim Studios and is available on Audible. More books in the Temptation series are in the works.

Website • Blog • Twitter • Facebook • Goodreads

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GIVEAWAY

One lucky winner will receive a $25 gift card (Amazon, B&N, iTunes), and three winners will each receive a paperback copy of EMBERS (book one)! Please enter via the Rafflecopter form. Giveaway is open internationally.

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