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T.R. Briar ~ Not Dead Yet, I Swear
Hi TR! I absolutely loved Realm Wraith and I've really got to get to the rest of the series. I will freely admit I needed some fluffy (not stabby) bunnies after that one. As for the art, is it all digital, hand drawn, or a mix? I can usually tell, but you've stumped me.
Funny you should say that, my mom kept wanting me to find/replace any instance of snakes with "fluffy bunnies" before she read my book.The covers are completely digital; sometimes I might do a rough sketch and scan it in as a guide but I paint over it, and usually don't leave the original pencils in the finished piece. For these covers in particular I did the sketches digitally too; here's a rough sketch I did for the first book cover:
What might be throwing you off is I sometimes mix in my photography with the art. The snow in the second book cover I took while on a walk in the middle of winter (had to edit out SO many weeds,) and that's actually my hand holding a feather quill pen in the novella cover (with digitally added wrinkles; I'm not that old.)
Very cool sketch... and fluffy bunnies? In dark fantasy. No matter what they are replacing, I'm sold! Welcome to the group!
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And you're an artist? I'll be looking for more of that.
Welcome and I hope you find many more fans here!
Wow! That is most impressive. I've been staring at the hand trying to see what you did. I'm definitely extra jealous of your talent now. ;)
Thanks guys!Christina: not sure if it'll help much, but this was the original photo I started with. I pretty much just painted over the photo with a paintbrush, and replaced the paper with something more parchment-y. (Coming up with Old English sentences to write onto the parchment was one of the harder parts.)
TR!!!That's a mighty long feather you have...
*smirks*
(Seriously no idea what I'm saying but helloooo!)
Wow! Yeah, I can't see the photo part at all!
For anybody that might be interested, I put up a blog post where I went step-by-step over the process for my most recent cover: http://www.invertedworlds.com/a-littl...
So a couple days ago I got a new laptop. Sadly, no touch interface so I'm still just using my regular tablet, but it has a much nice graphics card so it's a lot nicer for art. I did a test painting/concept for a character in a book I'm currently working on, and I thought I'd post the picture in here:
(Signature's a newer one I started using about six months ago.)
T.R. wrote: "For anybody that might be interested, I put up a blog post where I went step-by-step over the process for my most recent cover: http://www.invertedworlds.com/a-littl..."Very cool! Thanks for the link. I love following the process.
And love that phoenix person, and the signature. Amazing artwork.
Thanks!I like to sometimes scribble out a visual for my characters, especially if they have some kind of fantastical design, because it gives me a starting point for describing them in the book. Even if it's not a really detailed description (leaving something to the reader's imagination,) or it changes a bit from my original design idea, it's just something to visualize as I'm writing.
Ooooh, the image in comment #11 is just...*smiles wide*
Nice artwork T.R. I like your web page too, but I couldn't find a button to follow your blog? Was I having a boy look?
You mean like an RSS feed/mailing list or something? I don't think I specifically set anything like that up; my site's not hosted on Wordpress, it's just using Wordpress's software, so there's no default "Follow this blog" button.
You should set one up to help build a fan base/following. I'd certainly follow to read about your new artwork and books. Something to think about for the future maybe?
I don't really update my blog that frequently so it didn't seem like it was super necessary to set up some kind of follow button, but I guess you have a point. I can try to look into some kind of mailing thing. Since Wordpress has an RSS widget I put that into my footer, so I guess people can follow me that way? (I'm not super familiar with how RSS works.)
Hi T.R. yes, I believe people can follow your RSS feed. But I think the best option would be to put in a sign up form so you can start building an email list (ie sign up to my blog to receive updates on new releases, etc). I think Wordpress do this on the paid version, but if you are on a mail service like Mailchimp or Awebber you can set one up there and imbed it into your blog. I would certainly recommend it to all authors to start building a fan base and a list of their e-mails so you can let them know when you have a new book out, etc... There is plenty of info on this on the net if you want to look into it further.
Well, I looked into some options and set up a subscription button on the sidebar, so people can be notified when I make new posts at least. I'm not really a newsletter person so I probably won't do that unless there's some insane demand or something. I guess this way people will know when I make a new post, at least. And since I post about upcoming books and sales on the blog that should work to notify people.
Good work T.R. I'm very much the same - don't do the newsletter thing, but do want to notify people when I release something new. Now, I'm off to follow your blog :)
T.R. wrote: "For anybody that might be interested, I put up a blog post where I went step-by-step over the process for my most recent cover: http://www.invertedworlds.com/a-littl..."Gorgeous pic. I'm so jealous of people who can do the visual side of the arts! I think I can string a word or two together but forget drawing.
Mod
Man Angel.
Almost naked man Angel.
*Passes out*
C.B. wrote: "Angel.Man Angel.
Almost naked man Angel.
*Passes out*"
I will take that to mean you like it.
So, after some poking around I decided to stick a gallery section on my website, if anybody here wants to see some more of my artwork in better detail.
http://www.invertedworlds.com/gallery/
Amazing art! Thank you for sharing with us!
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Great work. That is an awesome signature!
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That's the phrase I was looking for! :D
I liked the link, nice art!
Glad the signature's going over well. I mainly decided to change it because the old sig used Tolkien elvish, because I thought it looked cool, but I wasn't entirely sure about the legal ramifications with using a copyrighted language/alphabet on my work (especially if it's commercial.) Plus I wanted something that was more my own instead of just borrowing somebody else's symbols.And I went and added about 9 new pictures to the gallery if anybody wants to check them out; think that should do it for writing-related art that I've done over the years anyways, until I make anything new.
So apparently I have the flu, which means I'm not getting much done over the next few days. Thought I'd show off something I was messing around with a couple months ago.I like to play around with RPG maker and I've been toying with the idea of making a game that's sort of a standalone story that still ties in to the Realm Wraith series. Kind of a goofy idea where my Abyss Lords wake up in some fantasy world trapped in mortal forms, and they're understandably not happy about it. Dunno if it'll go anywhere but I've been working on/off on making character sprites to use in the game, thought I'd post a few of the finished walk cycles here.
They came out a lot more adorable than I anticipated.
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Glad you like the sprites. I'll probably get back to attempted game making at some point. Maybe after I finish a novel draft and have more time.Anyways, having the flu sucked but I'm mostly better, outside of a super annoying cough. Thought I'd post two new things: a portrait I painted of the protagonist in a sci-fi story I wrote that I hope to eventually edit and publish. I might try to rework this image with some visual effects and crop it to use as a cover.
And I decided to do some prompt writing to get back into the swing of things, which I posted on my blog for anybody that wants to read it. It's a little rough but I might try to fine-tune it depending on feedback.
http://www.invertedworlds.com/sunrise/
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Sorry about that; I left the ending a little open partly because I liked the idea of the reader drawing their own conclusions, and partly because I wanted the story to stay short and trying to come to a definite conclusion would mean making the story longer than it already was (I was aiming for under 5k words but it ended up over 7k.) Glad you enjoyed it, though.I've actually never read the Mist. The movie shows up on TV sometimes but I never watch it because I already knew about the downer ending. Though I've heard the story has a different ending (And that King preferred the movie ending.)
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Yeah, I like it better when a story has at least a little optimism, even if it's trying to gut-punch you. I should probably try to read The Mist at some point.
I know I haven't been updating this thread much; I'm just not much of a social media person. But I figured maybe I could post about this.I've been toying with the idea of putting out a version of my trilogy as a box-set kinda thing, like you see some people do on Amazon, and had the idea that as an added incentive to buy the set, I'd include some illustrations (and maybe an added short story if I can think of one.) I'm still working out how feasible this is but I guess if it doesn't work out I can still put the pictures on my website or something.
So far I've only done illustrations for the first book; there's about 9 of them, and I'm not gonna post all of them, but I'll link a few if anybody wants to give me feedback (I'm linking instead of embedding since there's a size limit if I put them in the post.)
http://imgur.com/XsujP3P.png
http://i.imgur.com/9IfI0J4.png
http://i.imgur.com/xXXNOxV.png
http://i.imgur.com/Dv0IIit.png
I wanted to try doing traditional art for this one, so they're pen and ink washes that I fixed up afterwards in Photoshop because I have almost no experience with doing ink washes. But I think they came out okay. Thought it'd be nice to show some off.
Wow! I love the art! Now that I see this, I can see Realm Wraith as a graphic novel.
I think I lack the patience and the panel composition skills to do a full blown graphic novel. Maybe if I ever get rich I can pay someone else to make one. Glad you like the art, though. :D
Mod
So beautiful, T.R! Hugs
Thanks for the positive feedback; I'm glad to see people like them. Now I just have to figure out which scenes I want to draw from two more books and I'll have this project done.
Okay, over the past couple months I've planned out and finished all the illustrations from books 2 and 3. All the pictures are scanned but I still have a buncha pages from book 3 that I haven't cleaned up yet. But here's a few pictures from book 2 if anybody wants to see them.https://imgur.com/7jJtmJk.png
https://imgur.com/HgFx22j.png
https://imgur.com/pCbtBXa.png
https://imgur.com/6yZToRV.png
Also I decided to try out Patreon as a place to maybe make some money off my art, so I'm posting the illustrations there too. (I dunno what the rules are regarding links like that, but you can find a link to it pinned on my twitter account.)
These are fantastic! And here in the showcase, feel free to post links to all things you including Patreon accounts.
Thanks, glad you like them. :DAnd yeah, this is my Patreon account: https://www.patreon.com/trbriar
It's pretty new so there's not a lot on it yet.
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Books mentioned in this topic
Realm Wraith: Prelude (other topics)Realm Wraith (other topics)
Seven Origins (other topics)
Infernal Heirs (other topics)
I've been self-publishing books for about 3 years now, starting with my first novel in 2013, though it was written well before that using ideas and characters had been floating around in my skull for a decade prior. I currently have 3 full novels and one novella published, and I'm working on some additional stories at the moment.
And of course I've done a lot of artwork over the years of characters and settings, along with doing my own covers, and some other weird stuff. I'll probably post some of it in here over time.
Anyways, here's some bookwhacking:
The Realm Wraith series:
For the time being the only book series published right now, a three part (so far) supernatural/dark fantasy novel series about a man's literal journey into hell, as well as a short side-story novella. They are, in order:
So anybody who's into the series and wants to talk about it, or ask stuff about me, or wants to talk about writing or art (I'm much more knowledgeable about the latter) feel free to post here.