View from the Mirror ebooks – Brand New Covers

Here are my brand new The View from the Mirror covers, finished at last. They were done by my son, Simon. The books are available from Amazon now, and Kobo and the iBookstore shortly. They only have these covers in places where I hold the rights, such as Australia, New Zealand, Africa, Asia and the Pacific. In the UK, Europe and North America, where they’re published by my long-time publisher, Orbit Books, they have the old covers.

Click the first cover to see them full size, as a slide show.

Here’s how they were done, from Simon.

“Yeah it’s pretty simple.

– Start with a 3D model of the triune symbol which is the same for all 4 covers. [Model created in Maya, an incredibly complex program used to create movie special effects]
– Light the model from a different corner of the cover each time, this creates highlights and shadows on the symbol and spheres.
– Then light it from the top with a powerful spotlight, this creates a halo effect around the symbol.
– Light the background with colored lights to force a strong color difference between the cover backgrounds.
– Use different surfaces on the spheres to differentiate them across the covers.
– Apply different light effects to additional lights to create the corruption and/or texture on various selected elements. Up to 15 digital lights are used.
– Jiggle it all around until it looks decent, and apply the notes from the boss (that’s me) as they come in.”

Simple, ha! We went through about 15 drafts and it was about 8 days work for Simon plus a day and a half for me.