Just a little collage I made of some of my favorite covers using Ribbet's collage maker. :)
One of the reasons why I can't get paid for my graphics design services, and why my "customers" can't use my work commercially, is that I don't use stock images. Instead, since this is for entertainment purposes, I just use Google and Bing to find images. Besides, Figment seems to be cool with this anyway, and I'm not the even first person to do this. If I were doing this for commercial purposes, of course, I'd most likely buy a membership from a stock photo/clip-art site and pay a large sum of money to download a couple of measly images that I don't even know will make it to the finished product. Inevitably, I'll have to do this one day if/when I go pro, but until then, I'm always looking for more affordable ways to pursue my hobby. And then my friend Celestine gave me a recommendation for a website called MorgueFile. It's got a pretty weird (possibly morbid) name, but it turns out to be an excellent source for free and legal stock photos for just about any use possible, like for educational purposes and commercial purposes! (YES!!!) As you can see on these covers, I've incorporated a lot of MorgueFile photos into my covers. There were so many cat pictures that I was overwhelmed by the choices when I designed those first three covers! I think that for Echoes in the Night, it took me roughly two hours to complete the cover, because I tried out so many different cat pictures to see how they'd fit overall! (But when cat pictures are involved, things always take a long time, right?)
So now, this is great. I've got a wonderful resource for legal images, but I've still got one other hurdle to jump over. What about legal fonts? I'll discuss that next time. Hey everyone, it's me, Allison! If you've already perused this site, you've probably figured out that it's my artist's portfolio for the amateur graphics I've been designing for Figment. I figured I'd blog about my experiences as an amateur graphics designer as well. You're probably wondering, why am I making covers on Figment? Because it's a nice side-hobby from my writing hobby that I think I have a chance at being good at. As noted, I'm an amateur; I'm neither getting nor expecting to be paid monetarily for my services. I just want to hone these skills for the future, should I ever come to the shocking realization that writing is not the highest-paying full-time occupation. If you think that's a naive outlook in life, chances are, you're probably right. I've always wanted to be both a writer and an illustrator, but I think the former is more realistic skills-wise than the latter. (My handwriting is bad enough -- you don't want to see my drawings!) But, I've learned, one doesn't need to like Bob Ross (who is incredibly cool) or draw like Shoo Rayner (who is also incredibly cool) to call themselves an artist and actually mean it. Art comes in a lot of different forms (such as screaming,) and, most of the time, (unlike screaming,) can be appreciated by many others. The written word can be an art; when used properly, words can conjure up vivid imagery in our minds, happy and sad, beautiful and homely. I think by putting together graphics that, using eye-catching images and pretty fonts, are pleasing to the eye, I'm also making a form of art. PS. If I still haven't dissuaded you from wanting to see my drawings, here's a portrait of John Lennon I drew a few years ago: I think I made him look a little like a cow. O.o
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