So this morning (Morning for me anyways, Afternoon for most people) I had a "Meeting" with an old friend of mine who happens to be a wonderful artist herself.
Honestly, Lately I've been having doubts about my writing and have taken a break to process and review my work. It's getting closer to May 6th and I want so desperately to keep moving forward on this but my own self doubt is really getting in the way of progress.
But little by little I have been forcing myself to move forward even if just a little at a time. I think a good distraction from a lot of this has been in working to find a good and fitting cover and I also feel like if nothing else I am still staying productive on the project. I tried my hand at photoshop for the first time (As you can see from examples 4 and 5 of the previous blog post but I'm not really satisfied enough with my own skill to really know what I wanted out of a cover.
The previous post also contained 3 modified versions of a Stock photo that I thought was a good reference point. Credit for the Text goes to Patti Roberts of the Paradox series. Check out her work HERE if you haven't yet.
While I like the Photo, I want something a bit more...personal I guess you can say. i wanted something unique and something original. I figured that if I could find an artist that could "Get" the concept of my book and really bring it to life it could be beneficial to both of us in the long run.
So I met with Stephanie (The Aforementioned artist friend) and went out for coffee and talked a bit about what the story was about, some behind the scenes aspects that I haven't released publicly yet to give her a feel for the story and some character descriptions that Traci has in a notebook.
The more I talked about the story and the characters and getting the reaction from someone who hasn't been read in on the story sparked something in me and while I'm not saying that I'm just going to jump in and start writing it again right away it has given me much more hope that this will be something that people will be interested in.
Several concepts for art were discussed, from a picture of Vex holding a sword that would reflect both aspects of the world (night/day summer/winter) I liked the idea but it's a hard one to wrap my head around without visually seeing it.
Another one is the idea of a "World Tree" Concept similar to that of Norse mythology. Where half of the tree would be dead and barren while the other half bloomed and would be very much alive. The roots of the tree would be wrapped around the planet in which you would be able to see that half the world was bright and colorful while half was shadowed in perpetual twilight.
I'm sure we'll continue to discuss various concepts but I am so happy to have gotten ahold of her and to share a bit of the world with someone that grasped the concept so easily and really added to it.
Hopefully soon I'll have more to share about this and I really hope that you all will love it :)
-Ryan
Honestly, Lately I've been having doubts about my writing and have taken a break to process and review my work. It's getting closer to May 6th and I want so desperately to keep moving forward on this but my own self doubt is really getting in the way of progress.
But little by little I have been forcing myself to move forward even if just a little at a time. I think a good distraction from a lot of this has been in working to find a good and fitting cover and I also feel like if nothing else I am still staying productive on the project. I tried my hand at photoshop for the first time (As you can see from examples 4 and 5 of the previous blog post but I'm not really satisfied enough with my own skill to really know what I wanted out of a cover.
The previous post also contained 3 modified versions of a Stock photo that I thought was a good reference point. Credit for the Text goes to Patti Roberts of the Paradox series. Check out her work HERE if you haven't yet.
While I like the Photo, I want something a bit more...personal I guess you can say. i wanted something unique and something original. I figured that if I could find an artist that could "Get" the concept of my book and really bring it to life it could be beneficial to both of us in the long run.
So I met with Stephanie (The Aforementioned artist friend) and went out for coffee and talked a bit about what the story was about, some behind the scenes aspects that I haven't released publicly yet to give her a feel for the story and some character descriptions that Traci has in a notebook.
The more I talked about the story and the characters and getting the reaction from someone who hasn't been read in on the story sparked something in me and while I'm not saying that I'm just going to jump in and start writing it again right away it has given me much more hope that this will be something that people will be interested in.
Several concepts for art were discussed, from a picture of Vex holding a sword that would reflect both aspects of the world (night/day summer/winter) I liked the idea but it's a hard one to wrap my head around without visually seeing it.
Another one is the idea of a "World Tree" Concept similar to that of Norse mythology. Where half of the tree would be dead and barren while the other half bloomed and would be very much alive. The roots of the tree would be wrapped around the planet in which you would be able to see that half the world was bright and colorful while half was shadowed in perpetual twilight.
I'm sure we'll continue to discuss various concepts but I am so happy to have gotten ahold of her and to share a bit of the world with someone that grasped the concept so easily and really added to it.
Hopefully soon I'll have more to share about this and I really hope that you all will love it :)
-Ryan