Cover Remix Project

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Since I can’t do Instagram easily, I figure I’ll post some of the covers and what I’ve learned about cover design here. First of all, I wanted to go into video game covers. I started by looking at the ones on my shelf.

I don’t have that many anymore, but these ones caught my eye first, for different reasons. I wanted to look into it a bit more, so I looked up some popular culture games, to see what they looked like.

I noticed a trend. It even continues back, with older games.

A few articles I found dove into this trend, of having the main hero stand center screen, in some powerful pose. The other big trend is close-ups.

So I thought about how to make them better. The ones on my shelf varied in success, but few had the same cover repetitiveness I saw online. Oblivion’s game box was boring and flat. I don’t even really know if the symbol in the center has any meaning. The other four, however, were better. I really liked the use of horror tropes in Left 4 Dead and Silent Hill Homecoming’s covers.

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Get it? Left “Four” Dead? Eh?

The severed hand holding up the number 2 was a clever tie in to the name, a reference to the first game’s cover, and showcased the zombie element well.

However, Silent Hill’s cover doesn’t suit its’ actual game play at all. The cover feels like it belongs on the front of a game about a haunted house, not the city-crawling physiological cultist horror that Silent Hill uses.

 

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A good example of a game that might be better with cover art like Silent Hill’s

Persona 4’s box art really stood out, with the sectioned off areas, bright colors, and artistic layout, the cover really felt like “art” in a way that not many of the others did.

This didn’t help with the fact that I would need to remake a cover, as it only showed me either what would be my starting place, or my ending place. So I looked more, and I found something interesting. Ico, in it’s original Japanese release, had a different cover. As well, it had a book.

All of these covers seemed more interesting than the one used in the American release of the game, but also gave me a reference point for two, more even, ways to do the same game cover.

A selfie

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A selfie I drew of my main character, and her friend who made her take a picture. I used an editor program called Pixlr to make it look like an old polaroid image. The chemical burn effect is used to hide the fact I can’t draw faces!

Enthymemes and Synecdoches

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This post of Tumblr showed up on my dash while I was working on things for this class at lunch. Reminded me of a number themes of visual rhetoric. For example, in the first post, the person responded to the theoretical situation with the image and comment. It is visual synecdoche to make their point. Since they don’t directly state said point, that would make it an enthymeme as well. When the poster responds to the negative comments their first post received, they use the same tactics. The screen shots are from the two commenter’s About Me’s pages. They leave a rather disturbing conclusion to jump too, and the picture of the popular Phone Guy meme photoshopped over the police station is a great visual response showing how they feel about it.

Fight Story- First Edit

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At the end of the 2000s, there was a group of friends that identified themselves as the “weird” folk. This group of friends played D&D Friday nights, watched anime, and bad-mouthed their school’s sports teams, mostly because they had bought into the Jocks-vs.-Nerds mentality.

Well, the little brother of one member of the group was one such jock. He was on the school football team, strong for his size (he was a little taller than 5’6″ at the time), and very hot-headed.

So one Friday, they were hanging out. The brother, Alex, came home from the game he’d played, already in a funk. He stormed in the door and slammed it. The member of the group who lived in the home being used asked her grandmother, who had followed him in, what was up. “He’s just upset because they lost the game tonight.” Pretty simple. He stormed up to his room and the resident group member went back to her friends and relayed the information.

As was said, they played up the trope, so they got into a little bit of a joke session, trading jibes at jocks and football players in general. It was just for their amusement, not intended to be some dig at the younger brother, but he overheard them on the stairs.

So down comes Alex, face red and fists balled up. He demanded they repeat what they’d said to his face. Now, the friends, they weren’t pushovers. All of them, with the exception of Julia, the friend whose house this story takes place in, exceeded 6′, and most of them had self-defense training of some sort. So, rather than feel threatened, the guys were just bemused. One decided to inform Alex of this little detail.

He was not as amused.

His threatening tone grew to actual threats, and one friend, a 6’5″ guy named Chance, stood up and told him to leave us be. Alex responded with a punch to the face. Chance barely moved at the blow, but his glasses had been knocked off. Around the table, a few other guys stood up. Julia was shocked and, to be honest, terrified. She’d never been in a fight or witness to one. Before she could get an adult, Chance and another friend, the one who’d spoken up before named Easton, had sandwiched Alex between them, effectively pinning him.

Alex started to yell, and that alerted the “authorities” faster than I could have. My grandfather entered the room, face dark, and ordered him to stand down. Alex spat back insults and continued trying to get free to continue the fight. My grandfather ordered the boys away, yanking Alex back from them at the same time. They backed up, and a few yells were exchanged between Julia’s family members.

Then, faster than anyone could really process, Alex lunged at his, and Julia’s, grandfather. Now, this man is 70+ but still works full-time as an electrician, he’s not some frail little man. Despite his health, it was still shocking how fast he moved. One moment the little brother was throwing a fist at my grandfather, and the next he was eating the carpet, pinned down and helpless.