Something I Can Do?

[OldTimer]

Greetings Cover Artists. I'm new to these forums but have been using this site for a year now. My shelf contains quite a few Universal Game Cases as well as a Sonic and Knuckles custom box I made using an EA Sports Genesis case.

Unfortunately, I've run into a bit of a snag. The covers I've been using are the custom vertical ones that Shenske made for the N64 and SNES. There are many games in my collection that lack this vertical design. I don't want to use the standard boxart because it wouldn't look that great on my shelf. I also don't want to convert all of my cases to the standard art because I've already spent a lot of money on all the cases that I have.

My question is, would someone like me, who knows nothing about Photoshop, be able to make vertical covers for the UGC's? I know there are tutorials here on the forums; I'm just curious if I can learn how to do it in a reasonable amount of time.

Lastly, if it is something I can do, would Photoshop be a worthy investment for this project?

[Arseen]

Hello I'll try to answer you questions.


Photoshop CS2 is free to download, so very worthy investment.
Also Paint.net and Gimp work fine, but might have trouble with PSD files (but I have SNES template in PDN format that Paint.net uses).

Feel free to ask questions as they rise, and we have some guides and tutorials available on the forum somewhere (usually in the FAQs, Guides, and Templates section).

And learning the cover making at basic level is surprisingly easy.
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Making Vertcal SNES covers for games that have Horizontal cover made already is usually quite easy.
At easiest simply copy/paste the front image (DO NOT DISTORT THE IMAGE, BUT IF NESESSARY DO SOME REBUILDING) into the template.
Eventually you should learn how to clean the images yourself so you can use scans instead of ready covers as source.

Then find high quality screenshots (Capture from emulator or Youtube, or simply do Google search for suitable image) and then input those to the template.

Then copy the backtext from Gamefaqs, if that is not available find the image of back cover on Google or Ebay and write it (sometimes/often you can find the whole back text by typing the first 2 sentences of it in to Google) and input that to the template.

Then find out what the barcode and SNS code and write those into the correct spots of template.

Then check the lagal text part and correct the publisher and maker of the game and correct the year.

THEN DO QUALITY CHECK SO SEE IF YOU MADE MISTAKES OR TYPOS AND FIX THOSE.

Then flatten (term meaning combining the template layers intop one layer which even the simplest printing programs understand) and save the image as JPEG, and give it to the community to critize for quality check.
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Same goes for the N64 but those need making the yellow background of the back cover and green background of the spine, but those are still bit beyond my skills (or Paint.net can't do them, at least I have not managed to use the color adjusment correctly).

[OldTimer]

Thanks for the reply. If I get good enough, I'll upload them for others to use. I have about 20 games or so that need covers, so this might be a good summer project. I think I'll start with Pilot Wings 64.

[Arseen]

[KalessinDB]

^^^^^^

Before you get too into it, search the everliving crap out of the forums (there's a few nooks and crannies you may not have access to yet, but get a few more posts under your belt and they'll open up), there's probably 2-3x as many covers posted on the forums or in people's sigs as there is on the site proper.  Plus Arseen is a magician with finding them and posting them.

Of course, if you just want to practice, have at it!  But I'm not personally a fan of reinventing the wheel. 

[Arseen]

^^^^^^

Before you get too into it, search the everliving crap out of the forums (there's a few nooks and crannies you may not have access to yet, but get a few more posts under your belt and they'll open up), there's probably 2-3x as many covers posted on the forums or in people's sigs as there is on the site proper.  Plus Arseen is a magician with finding them and posting them.

Of course, if you just want to practice, have at it!  But I'm not personally a fan of reinventing the wheel. 

Yeah, just ask before youdo covers as there are plenty hidden.

And me finding SNES and N64 Verticals is not magic as there are master list for both that I just pick the covers from.

[OldTimer]

Wow! Thanks! If this is the case, I might only have to do a couple of covers then.

Of course, the first step is getting Photoshop CS2 on my computer. I tried to install it last night, but there's a process that need's to be done in order for it to work on Windows 7. Nothing I can't handle I'm sure, it'll just take some time.

*Edit: So after doing some searching, I could have access to more vertical covers if I more more on the forums? Interesting.