Cover Design Showcase With Duncan Long

Today's book cover design showcase takes a look at the work of Duncan Long, who has been a professional cover designer for many years and is happy to work with indie authors along with the more established ones. Take a look at his amazing work below:

MING

The author is working on a series of books that will have star fields for each cover. This is the first in the series, and something that was realistic, yet also symbolic was required. So I created a "butterfly" star field, but added star/gas details that would be impossible to actually have in a real display of stars and nebula. The trick (of course) was making this seem real rather than impossible. It was basically painted digitally. I used a Trajan font for the lettering of this cover to give it a classical look.

The Stalker Cyborg

This is created around a 3D model I've been working on. I rendered it and then imported it into my paint program where I refined and adjusted things, painting in portions and the glowing reflection areas on her metallic surfaces.

The Treehouse Clan

The is actually a small detail from a larger picture I created of an off-world planet with giant trees that the people lived in. I used a photo reference for the gal, greatly altering her appearance in this final version, painting tattoos on her and giving her some exotic flowers and glowing orbs. I originally had a small monkey-ish creature to the right of the picture, but he proved a distraction so he's painted out in this version of the picture.

FOAM III

I had the privilege of doing all three covers for Richard Thieme's FOAM series, and the third book sort of links the real world to the interstellar / spiritual. So again there was a need for both an impossible scene that still looks real. The building and character (with his yellow plaid shirt and WWI-style aviator's hat) were 3D model renders that were painted over; the spiral galaxy a digital painting I did for this illustration, and then the city which in this case is part digital painting and part aerial photo.

Check out Duncan's website to view more of his work and get in touch with him:

Website: http://www.duncanlong.com/art.html