TUTORIAL: My "NOT ANOTHER TEEN GAME" cover

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**PART 1** (Due to limited 10000 characters and 8 images per post)


Here's a "kinda" of Tutorial on how I made my 'Not Another Teen Game' cover as posted at VGBoxart. I guess you should see the completed boxart first before reading this to get the idea what's this is all about. Also, I mentioned 'kinda' because... if I did a REAL tuturial, it would probably take a good few pages and screen shots... so it's more of a basic run-thru on how the cover is made.
ALSO -- this tut is using Adobe Photoshop CS2.

http://www.vgboxart.com/view/13930/n...me/?replies=20


Anyway.. first things first. My cover is actually based on TWO covers -- the normal version (front) and the Unrated cover (back)... as seen here.






I usually make printable FULL-SIZE 300dpi replacement covers for PS3, Wii and X360... so doing my cover using the X360 template is just a random choice. It's also reduced to

200dpi so images can fit without enlarging.

FRONT
TITLE LOGO: Anyway, with template armed... the logo is the first thing to do on the front since it takes up most of it. Anyway.. I didn't create the main logo... I just ripped it from a DVD cover and removed the 'Movie' bit. The 'Game' part is just normal text enlarged to the matching size and gradient orange blended with a 4px inner bevel and 50%

contour. The 3D-like of the text is done with EYE CANDY 4000 motion trail filter.

The Characters.
The characters on the front are pretty much done the same way as you might expect. Pictures loaded.. resized to correct size, and then layer-mask added to remove the background -- Rendered as some people call it. I don't like the word "render" as I use to mess around with Sculp 3D and other 3D packages, and render to me means calculaing a 3D image -- it just confuses me. Anyway, I prefer masking-out since that's what I do.

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CHECK MY MASKING/RENDERING Tutorial for more info. below

http://www.vgboxart.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5663

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Back to the cover...
The characters are put in front first. The only character I've edited is Lara Croft, as I quickly drew some specs on her, since the original girl on the front had them on --- makes her ugly huh? LOL



The text is normal text (Font is Futura XBlk BT). The curved-corner boxes around them are made by just drawing a couple of curved different colour boxes using the shape tool inside the other, then deleting the inside one. Then 1xp stroke and drop shadow added to both. They text and shape is linked, so they can be duplicated and rotated. (unlink to change text size when required).

Shadow of characters. Basically, I couldn't be bothered to do correct shawdows for all the characters.. so I basically added a new layer underneath all the characters and with a low opacity/hardness black brush, swiped around the feet of the characters.

Because certain characters are on different planes... I've also changed the colouring of each. Under IMAGE-->ADJUSTMENTS-->HUE/SATUATION darken those at the back, and brighten those at front. Also changed the LEVELS on some that didn't look too good.

Well.. that's more or less the front... apart from the bottom text, and the added EA logo/TEEN rating logo.

BACK
The Back is obviously the hardest to do for a cover (hence why so many people don't do complete covers I guess). Anyway.. Like the original, decided to use the same slant box. So, added new layer and drew a big white slant box on the left side similar to original.. added black stroke, and a light brown drop-shadow with blending option.



Added edited Text in the top right, and since the original had pics of cheerleaders which I couldn't find a Teen game with, I added a pic of the Soul Calibur ladies!
The blue Special Features box is easy to do. Draw a tall rectangular box in new layer, fill it blue. To get it slanted, select EDIT-->TRANSFORM-->PERSPECTIVE and grab the

bottom-middle anchor and move right so that it's in-line with the edge of white layer undreneath. Do the same for small white box... and then add text.

Bikini Girl
As the Original cover had a girl laying down, had to do something similar... so it was nice for Tecmo to release some nice girls on the beach! LOL Anyway, best pic I could find for the circumstance.. and the best thing was the sand and shadow of the girl.. it fitted well with my white bg. So it was another case of adding Layer Mask and removing all the bg from the image (leaving the sand/shadow).. this took a bit of time, but well worth it.




GRAW/LOST PLANET IMAGES
The above additions was by ELCrazy & MugglesMan111 in the forums



The Lost planet pic was real nice... but was too LONG and I didn't want to chop the bottom off, so had to remove the "Entertainment Weekly" text to the left next to the girls pic so I have enough room from GRAW image there.
Anyway.. placed the Lost planet image behind white Slant layer and edged it into the spine too. Since the background of my cover is white, added a layer mask to image, and with a black low-opacity/low hardness brush faded the top of the image and around Wayne to bg. Then added text at the bottom with 40% opacity white box layer underneath.



The Graw pic was a problem as it had a black bg -- after adding layer-mask and removing it... it didn't look perfect. So I added a layer underneath, and added a black to transparent gradient in the top right corner so blend the image in better. It also helped blend the image to the Lost planet pic.

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**PART 2**


3 SMALL PICS
To dupe the original cover.. added three similar small pics with slant boxing. To get all 3 boxes exactly the same, I add a new layer and drew a slanted box like before and filled it in red and reduced the opacity to 50%. This is just a template and won't been seem. Grabbed three pictures from the web, place one UNDERNEATH the RED layer and reduce to size making sure it's slightly bigger than the RED layer. Select the RED layer, Use MAGIC WAND to select Red area, then select your image in layer box and add a layer mask and I now have a small slanted pic. Used Blending option to add small black stroke around the image. Repeat with the other two images (copying the blending stroke from first) Add text underneath. Hide RED layer.



TIME CRISIS
I didn't know what else to add... and I saw a website about TEEN games... and one of the 'facts' was list of people killed in games per hour! Time Crisis: Project Titan rated top with 1292 kills per hour!! There wasn't any decent pics of the game especially for the rectangular space I had left, so decided to use the latest PS3 Time Crisis game images instead.

For Grey box
As the back has a slant theme... added a new layer, drew a rectangle the width of the 3 boxes above and lining up with the blue rectagle on right. Then EDIT-->STROKE a black line of 2px inside to get a box. Then use perspective mode like before lining up with blue box on right.
To colour it in, select the MAGIC WAND TOOL, have a Tolerance of say 2, and select inside the box. Then select the GRADIENT TOOL, and change the colour so that it's a light grey to medium grey (I actually picked the colours from the LOST PLANET image). Then select RADIAL GRADIANT from the top, and draw a line from edge of box to centre and I get a faded grey box.



Grabbed the two pics of the two guys from TC4 and again masked them out using layer-mask method. Unfortunately, the gun on the guy on the right extended too much over the blue rectangle -- I really didn't want to reduced the size or cut the end of the gun off, so I just 'lasso' selected that part that overlapped the blue rectangle, and with a black 10% opacity brush on the layer mask, faded outso it looks like it's behind the blue box.
Copied/Edited the text/white box from the right side.





SPINE
The Spine is pretty simple. Since the Lost Planet image and Pikachu image overlaps into the spine, a new layer is added and a white fill is used on the spine with reduced Opacity of 50%. This is so you can still see the images underneath, but also when the title text is on it, it won't blend into them. The spine text is simply normal text (Font is Kabel Ult BT) in orange. Actually, I copied the text, and put the copy underneath and shifted it down a little for the shadow and reduced the opacity instead of using blending option.



The Last thing to do is to clean up anything... Zoom-in remove anything that looks out of place and so forth... plus edit all the spec boxes and logos etc.. on the back/bottom, plus a web-site. Obviously, as this is not a 'real' game, it's not that important - I chose EA GAMES since they are the biggest company barring the 3 main console makers.



AND VIOLA.. the completed Cover!

[VGMaster]

Wow! That rocks! I like how simalir it is to the movie cover. Kinda like how my VGBoxart Ultimate Alliance is a lot like the actual! I love how you used renders!

[ELCrazy]

OMG! Thank you! (:

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Glad you like it... might be useful for box makers.


HOWEVER.. I did have to remove a number of images (mainly those from the masking/'Render' section due to the forums limited image posting, and a couple of images at the start (hence why it was a bit plain at the beginning).
I might do a separate Masking/Rendering Tutorial, just to compliment the Tutorial (complete it proper I guess).

OH... sorry for all the spelling mistakes... typed the thing in Notepad as quickly as possible without checking through

[shaggyrockmer]

do you have the psd for this still?