Deep underneath the ragged city of Marenis, Areeve Waters has a secret: her brother is a murderer. Sent years ago from her house in a flurry of tears and terror, Areeve lived on the streets, squabbling for meals - until the children of Below welcomed her to their world. She lives her life in bliss, oblivious to the troubles of her past. Yet when a disaster decimates the city above and delivers the surviving population to the children's doorstep, living becomes burdensome. When secrets of their underground utopia become unraveled, more than one vile mind is set on corrupting it. Will Areeve be able to shield her beloved underground city, or sacrifice it all for the safety of her friends?Read Below here, and check out Stephanie's works on Figment.
[Click on the image to see the full-size cover - although please be warned for when you download that this one is really, really big!]
Attribution: Cover design by Starflower. City premade background courtesy of E-DinaPhotoArt on deviantART (http://e-dinaphotoart.deviantart.com/). Girl stock courtesy of MariaAmanda on deviantART (http://mariaamanda.deviantart.com/).
About the attribution: Please copy-paste the attribution into the description of your Figment piece so that the stock artists are credited properly and legally.
The design process:
I knew that I wanted to do a double exposure as soon as I saw how much freedom you were giving me with the design. I thought it would fit the dark aspect of the cover really well, and besides, pictures of cities are usually clunky otherwise. (I was afraid this would turn out badly because I've never actually done a double exposure, but I'm really happy with it and I hope you are as well.)
The girl picture was easy enough to find - all I had to do was search 'white hair' on the deviantART stock database and soon enough this lovely model came up. Then for the background I had to search around a little bit to find an image big enough to work with.
The double exposure took a bit of tweaking - after I completed the basic steps, I had to blur the background to get the perfect balance of background and girl. But adding the text after that was nearly painless - after I realized that Shipped Goods would fit the title typeface well, I fiddled with the color and layering a little until I got this lovely, bold red. And the author text was sort of a no-brainer. I kept it minimalistic to avoid distraction from the main features - the title and double exposure.
Overall, I modeled the design after the cover of Jackaby by William Ritter, with the sweeping cursive typeface and the bluish double exposure (ack, I keep repeating the phrase "double exposure"; it must be grating on your eyes). I'm actually very proud of how it turned out, so I hope it fits your story nicely!