The Dualist
posted 2008.11.20 at 17:11
20100114 : 6x9 crop of second 1e cover is here, full spread below. Unlike the other chapter spreads, this one has a mockup of the book spine. I probably should have done that for Incursion and Expulsion, but oh well - the idea is to produce the thing as One Book. If it becomes One Book In Two Parts, I'll spine 'em up then - it might be good practice for TV and DCR, as the two combined will be roughly the same length as The Dualist.
As with all of the covers, this one is effectively "art complete" but not "ready to publish" - for that to happen, the spread would need to be broken up and the art shifted around to compensate for bleed - front, back, and spine. This is why publishing the chapters as issues is tempting - it would give me a few tries to work the kinks out before committing to something Big and Expensive.
This may not be the Final Cover, but it'll do for now - the original sketches had a "flotilla" shot on the back, mixed in with Dyluck's hair. The Sabrosa, Cheops, Daedalus, Hemera, a Majestic and a couple of Lokis... and despite some extended wailing and gnashing of teeth and much hammering at several different compositions and mixes of boats... I couldn't come up with anything that I really fancied. The blockiness of ship design from this period doesn't help.
Ultimately, I went with no ships - the story is ultimately about Dyluck, after all. The space porn is really just the icing on the cake.
This is a 6:9 crop of the original 3:4 first edition hardcopy cover. Nothing has changed from a design standpoint.
Yet. A new cover will replace this one within the next... sometime. I've sketched out what I'd like to do for the TD2E covers, have come up with something I like, and just need the time to implement it. I did this after I came up with the temp cover for Incursion, of course.
First Edition Metadata
OPD : 2003.05.22 @ 04:36
2007.10.04 : Replaced the "temp" cover with the cover used in the "first edition" hardcopy. The old cover looks like this:
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Man, am I glad the positioning on this is finally fixed. This will not be the cover of the final hardcopy, assuming there ever is one - the original file is 1200x1600, or roughly half the size of current (printworthy) pages.
Posted 2005-04-20 22:26:56 and backdated to its original post date of 2003-05-22 04:36:37 so it's all nice and chronological 'n shizzle.
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Done 24 May 2003, back-published to 2003-05-22 04:36:37 for positioning, and updated 31 August 2004 (logo change).
Original post text:
Probably the best place to start. Conceptual weld of some things from '99 or so, some older material, and recent events.
Oddly, I was thinking of proceeding from HotGoN straight into the story. A break seems appropriate, given the slight mess my life has insisted on getting itself into this weekend.
Also, this is a hell of a lot prettier than the HotGoN pages.
Thus concludes the swath of descruction wreaked by the last two and a half days of my life. I'm going to sleep, hopefully regain my attention span, wake up to an empty house, and do laundry. During which I'll hopefully sketch.
==[ EDIT : 31 August 2004 ]==
Revised the type kerning and updated the ding, replacing the APD emblem with the ATC glyph.