Creating Cover Art

I’ve had people ask several times about the covers I’ve made, so thought I’d do an entry about what I use.

The short answer is that it’s a software program called Poser, which I first began using about eight years ago. It’s a 3D rendering and animation software; you can create 2D images (such as my book covers) as well as animated movies.

Poser is awesome, especially for someone like me, who lacks any artistic talent at drawing or painting.

I was recently given the opportunity to upgrade to Poser 8 by SmithMicro, the company that makes Poser and other creative software. Of course, I jumped at the chance, eager to see what improvements had come about since Poser 7 (which was my current version of it).

Upon installing it and firing Poser 8 up for the first time, I seriously chortled in glee over the new look of the user interface.

But the improvement that is making me the happiest is how they changed the handling of the Content Libraries. They’ve turned those to text listings, instead of folder icons, which of course cuts down on loading time. The options for switching back and forth between Libraries are all right there, no need to click several times to return to the main list of Content Libraries.

Why is this my favorite Poser 8 improvement?

Well, for 4-5 years I purchased a lot of 3^rd party content for Poser, in addition to regularly searching the internet for free content. The end result is that my 3^rd party content collection is well over 50 GB in size. In both Poser 6 and 7, Content Library loading time was an issue.

So the change to text lists helps to speed the process of creating images up nicely.

Poser is a sensible solution at a reasonable price, so if you’re a writer who’d like to try her hand at creating your own cover art, or even character portraits to help the writing process along, I highly recommend beginning with Poser 8, and give fair warning: creating with it can be addictive.

So there you are: I use Poser as the base for all my cover and other art, often with a bit of PhotoShop post work to finish the images off, so that I end up with things like the following:

Try a 30 day trial of Poser 8 for free!