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WARNING! Essay Approaching ***
Welcome to the forums and site Josh! great to have a new and enthusiastic cover maker around!
And of course, many many thanks for offering to make covers that the site needs to fill gaps in certain lists...........you have arrived at a very opportune time as the main man who is collating scans to get the SNES Horizontal retail section complete, Banisher, has just shelled out over $1000 on boxes JUST SO he can scan them in for us cover creators to turn into UGC covers for the site!
He has been begging for assistance, as it has been just him and I (with only sporadic input from others but more recently Arkazhel on a more consistent basis) tackling the old random covers for a while now.
For the sake of your "real" introduction to the process here......and what I mean by that, is your first taste of the kinds of feedback the cover admin's who assess whether covers are up to the super, and rightly so, high standards necessary for the site will give.........I just chose one of your SNES covers (WITWI Carmen Sandiego) to have a look at from my perspective.
So please take this feedback as it is intended from me, which is with the utmost respect for what
WE (as in, you too!) do and purely for constructive purposes to both ensure the quality we have here is always ensured........but equally so you know what to expect when the cover admin's begin assessing your covers (and it is not so much of a shock to the system when they perhaps get rejected!
)
Also, please note that I and many other starting cover makers have gone through the same/a similar learning/feedback curve.......so the "issues" I am about to post regarding that cover individually are not something
ANY of us havent had pointed out (and had to address if we want our covers uploaded to the site)........so please do not be put off and feel free to come back at it with some venom to get it out of your system if you feel like it!
......I just like to do this for new people as receiving this kind of feedback really has helped me improve so much, and I want to pay that back putting a lot effort into REALLY explaining what we mean here, rather than perhaps a cover of yours just not being uploaded and you never knowing why (as the admin's are super busy with the reviewing of covers so cant always
1 -
Zoom in, zoom in, zoom in - Yeah, 200% minimum, 300% preferable..........and if you do on the cover I chose there, you will see all kinds of dust, flick, scratches, specks, imperfections all over the cover. This is where many people who start here have issues, as obviously from a normal distance your covers look fantastic!! but when you zoom in.......and when they are printed, these things will show.
As you sound like an experienced Photoshopper, I am sure I do not need to explain what the clone stamp tool is, or perhaps even suggest anything else that would aide in clearing/cleaning up these things that a cover admin would instantly spot and say are not up to the required level.
2 -
Contrast and colour balance - Again, even with your covers looking great from a normal view.........I instantly felt the images and colours in them looked a little "flat".
So play with the contrast and colour balances to make them pop more and generally look sharper......both for the overall quality purposes and also because again, the cover admin's would more than likely point this out.
3 -
Overall quality of art and game play captures - Really just more a focus on these in terms of ensuring both they pop and also have any and all blemishes removed.
NTSC-U Horizontal retail covers are one of the few that cover admin's will allow for "original" images from scans to be used, so long as they are cleaned up to a very high standard......otherwise, they want them re-captured through an emulator or Youtube video (yes, thats, right! lol, re-capturing the EXACT scenario depicted in the game image).
4 -
Less is "Moire" - Sorry, just trying to be funny instead of making these titles all "Do THIS!"..........but I am sure you know what the moire effect is, ie: the dot matrix type look these old scans carry with them.
The cover admin's like this effect removed/mitigated for as much as possible......so a filtering process of noise reduction, median levels, or just any way you know of/like to remove such an effect will be fine.
5 -
General colouring, solidifying of text - This is key for ALL text on the cover.......typically all the legal text down the bottom on the back is re-typed so as to make it as clear and sharp as possible, otherwise if you copy it directly from the scan then it will either not be sharp enough (as is the case with the cover I have looked at) or require a MASSIVE amount of work/re-drawing over to make it so.
Also, game logo's (ie: the name of the game) needs to be crazy sharp text wise, so focus on that especially.
And finally, those troublesome scans that have a text box or perhaps text layered over an image.......they need to be sharpened and the colours of the text box and/or image made perfect as well.
Best way to explain this, is via the white text box on the back of Carmen Sandiego - where it is originally white, you have obviously copied that over but its not white as in REALLY WHITE like it would ideally be! mostly because it would take a lot of time and effort to either remove the text, go and clean that up, make the box nice and perfectly white, then bring the text back onto it......or re-type/re-make the entire thing!
So..........yeah, thats general jist of my observations from just that cover and again, I really hope this does not come across as "Your covers arent very good" or "You really need to improve" as they are obviously REALLY good........but if you want to become someone who can help us out with this list, and am posting covers with the expectation that they will be uploaded to the site.......then these issues will prevent that.
Once again, many thanks for helping out with these.....you have made Banisher a very happy man already! and please do not be put off, its just that these retail covers especially have very high expectations and standards attached to them......and essentially EVERYTHING I have said to you here was said to me when I started, and I have improved so so much from that feedback, to that point that I have had 7 straight uploads of these since then.
