The wife had me working on the cover for book 3, so she could finalize her proof copy. I figured I would share the images with you guys since you (unless you are Rook) probably won't be seeing it for some time. We kept the same basic layout, just changing the text, font color, and images. I am linking the front and back covers of the first book as well just for comparison. And lastly, there is the pic we did for NaNoWriMo '08.
We tried a couple of different things to get the arm right. I wanted to do kind of a 'green screen' technique, but that failed miserably. In the end, we took some shots of the wife's bare arm, and a few just of the shirt. Then about an hour of pen work, retouching, and hue/sat/lum playing and we had a dark elf arm. The stone arm took even less work: desaturate, apply texture, some blurring and messing with levels and it was done. The sleeve was actually the back of the shirt with some trimming and distorting. It could use a little more shadow work, but everything I did screamed fake.
Anyways, hope you enjoyed your little preview of sorts of book 3.
