Let's give each other fancy tips about our covers!

[darthmongoose]

This cover is mostly fine. I think the positioning of the characters is appealing, and the soft watercolours suit the tone and the intended audience really well. If I scour for a thing to change, the hand of the person on the left is a little oddly positioned. The fingers are wrapping around like they're gently holding the other character's back...but then that person's elbows are also under the hand, as if the arms don't have volume.
Maybe try having the elbow of the character on the right instead overlap the hand of the other character, to enhance both the illusion of volume, and to really get that feeling of bodies woven together.

That's really all I have to suggest. This is a very nicely drawn and composed cover with great balance.

[Hipiticus]

Thanks for your help! I'll make sure to work on the fancy variant as well

[Tanako]

lol, Thanks for the good tip. I'll look into what you mentioned.

[YS_og]

@lizardlullabye you give THE absolute best cover reviews o_o

Even though they're other's works, it's already so much to keep in mind for anything I try next in the future.

With that said, I did want to also comment on the OP's cover. @kristynamaximova Did anyone mention the hand placement? That's the only thing besides the blocked title letters that stuck out to me. I wanna say the hand placed on his chest needs to be at an angle facing his forearm to their outside since they're that close together and the wrist joint would have to be fairly bent that direction to fit there.

And here's mine:

It's an Action/Sci-fi Mecha story with a heavy dose of family drama and geopolitics. Takes place in the not too terribly distant future, and no dystopia or anything. I want to know if the cover is too busy, underutilized space etc, or even if it has anything counterproductive to giving off such vibes or description as written above

[Katzalcoatl]

How much feedback do you want (even the smallest details)? Or just general stuff like composition? Could you also state what your story is about to give more accurate feedback?

[YS_og]

My bad. I forgot to do so in my rush earlier;;;

I will edit it into my original post

[Katzalcoatl]

I can see the mecha. But if the plot is heavy on family drama you might want to add something that says it is about family. As for what I see lacking is a bit of balance in the composition of certain elements (nothing major it just needs a bit of symmetry in certain parts).

I'll use images to explain what I mean:

The gap of the tittle from the top of the cover is too small. It makes it look like you ran out of space.
If I were you I would try to balance it more so it keeps a nice gap just like the one it has from the sides of the tittle to the edges of the cover.
You might have to play with it by moving the tittle a bit down, by making the letters a bit smaller or both.

I would personally reduce the amount of light reflected by the gun by just a tiny bit.
This will prevent the reflection of light from being the first thing the viewers sees.
The size distracts the viewer for a tiny second before they look at the rest of the cover.

You had a great idea on the letters of the bottom. It would be great if the light here left a trail with the shape of the letter. If you leave the trail of light as it is I would suggest making all letters consistant by having all of them leave a trail of light instead of having some letters (like the o in Koons) leave no trails of light.

Last but not least your tittle should have a consistant outline.
On the word Infinity you changed the outline to different tones of blue.
It looks like you ran out of ink printing a poster. I would suggest making the outline black or dark blue.
Same goes for the word harbinger but for a different reason.
The effect you added on Harbinger plus the slightly blue outline make the word look blurry.

For my taste, the infinity symbol is heavily concentrated on the right but I like symmetry lol.

[lizardlullabye]

There are good parts about the cover that look cool and work separately, but not together. . . ?
The title is clean cut like metal. The mecha is dynamic, playful and cannon-slinging in space. The humans are also cold and stern like metal? If the humans are the mecha' pilots, their "seriousness" currently doesn't match the mecha's action -- in fact, I'm not sure how anyone is related to each other -- friends, mecha & pilot, rival co-workers?

If this is mecha and their pilot, they should (PROBABLY) share the same energy so we get, yes person is piloting the mecha. Like in the Rugrats movie, a toddler piloting a giant robot scratched their butt, and so did the giant robot.

Just a side note for the lady. It appears she turned her body to the left, then turned her head to the right, and returned her sight to the left. These actions doesn't seem to fit her stern expression, which likely would just have turned her head back left to look left. That seems more efficient and direct. A character's eyes, head and/or torso can POSSIBLY point to where they are focusing on.

P.S. pretty sure last time I (kinda) reviewed this, it was just note to remove the colon. . .

[YS_og]

Thanks for spotting those inconsistencies! It's a wonder I never noticed those until now Those will definitely be tweaked when I get around to redoing the character art pieces. Only thing I will keep is the asymmetry of the infinity loop because I wanted that asymmetry in particular, feeling as if things felt more off balance when I had the shape in the exact middle without the altered angle/twist applied.

But yeah I also see your point on the cannon glare. Will try with it backed off some

[YS_og]

I remember now!! lol My bad, that was so long ago I had forgotten that was you I did remove the colon thanks to you pointing that out lol

But those two pointers are pretty big. I do need a character art redo since my style slightly changed since then (the 2 were drawn in 2020 and I just kept upcycling it as the cover changed), and those are great suggestions to follow. Planned on various art redos this spring/summer and the cover fixup was one on that list. Thanks again!!

[TMark_Art]

WOULD LOVE FEEDBACK. THANKS GUYS!!!

Read Kram-Bot: and the Alien Apocalypse :: One last robot. | Tapas Comics

[TMark_Art]

I'm a fan of the second one you've got. It says more about their personality than the first one. We know what the superhero doesn't know.

[LCT_m_a_d]

Only thing that comes to mind is the amount of space between the top half and lower half. The banner looks great.

[theyrebothakilogram]

It seems so obvious now that you pointed it out lol. I'll mess around with poses and perspective and I'll let you know how it goes :))

[Katzalcoatl]

First of all I love it. Love the colors. Now for some constructive criticism.

You are missing some details on your buildings.
What I mean is that the details on the buildings don't match the amount of details you put on your tittle. It looks like your buildings are sketches compared to the tittle.

Besides that you might want to add krambot to the cover and an alien ship closer about to attack/abduct kram-bot.

Your cover feels empty compared to the tittle.
The tittle gives me so many details about the story but the cover just shows me aliens attacking buildings.

I love the tittle and the colors but I don't love so much how empty it feels below the tittle. Don't know if you understand what I mean?

Another option is to add kram-bot below the tittle running from alien ships instead of a city being attacked.

A third option is to make your cover feel less empty is moving your buildings and aliens a bit up in your cover.

And then add the ground with more details of a city (streets). That way the cover will fill less emtpy and you can even add a Kram-bot looking back on the city instead of being attacked. Basically kram bot is observing the situation.

That is my opinion on how to improve your cover without removing the essence it gives the reader.

P.S. if you are missing space you might want to consider reducing the size of the tittle by a tiny bit as it does consume lots of space. You can even move it a bit up but idk how that would look I honestly like it as it is. But when you add details go a cover you have to adjust the size and place of the tittle accordingly.

[SleepingPoppy]

I always love lurking these threads and tucking away tips, but I FINALLY got around to making a new cover for my comic. Just finished today, so it still needs a polish, but any thoughts would be appreciated!

[cLonio]

Didn't know how else I can make it more unique so here is my generic af cover.

[Bella_Artz]

I made a new cover for my novel a few days ago. Not sure how it'll look to others or there are some small changes I could make

[Katzalcoatl]

@Bella_Artz I'm not sure what your story is about. Maybe a grim reaper or a witch? The tittle says keeper of demonic forces but I'm not really feeling that from the girl. You might want to add something to make it clearer (besides the tittle). It could be some small demons or a demonic gate (again don't know your story)? I do like the witchy vibes combined with the grim reaper vibes.

I have to say the way the left hand is drawn feels a bit unnatural. The position of the thumb doesn't match how the rest of the hand looks but it could be the lack of knuckles.

Besides that you probably need to change the color of the tittle to make it stand out a bit more. Your character has so many bright colors making the tittle barely visible especially the word "of" since it's black and in a bad spot it took me a while to see it.

I'm not a fan of placing your tittle in the middle of your cover. So I would suggest resizing the tittle and moving it elsewhere.

My suggestion would be to move the tittle like so:

You would probably have to move your name and resize it as well to keep the balance.

But that is just my personal preference. If you like the tittle how its placed then leave it like that but do change the colors so it can stand out more especially the word "of".

P.S. An extra idea but not needed would be adding some magic to her right hand. If she is a witch she could hold fire magic or some potions. If she is a grim reaper she could hold a skull. If she controls demons she could have really small demons running in the palm of her hand.

Again this is just extra and can be ignored.

Hope my review helps.

[Bella_Artz]

My story leans a bit more on modern day super hero with demon magic type fantasy.

But your suggestions are very helpful, I'll try them out once I improve my art. I'm still a bit of a beginner so I was going for something a bit easier on my skills.