Hollows Insider (Fake Magazine cover)

Content: |  Concept  |  Cover Image  |  Typography  |  Result  |

Concept

To start with, I knew I wanted to make a magazine based on Kim Harrison's Hollows book series. My initial concept was going to have the three main characters of the cast, in front of a Gothic cathedral. As I started thinking of how I would do the layout, though, I realized that would likely be a very busy cover image. In the end, I decided to use Rachel Morgan, the main heroine, only.

This decision made the process simpler and faster, at least in terms of finding the resources I wanted to use. I went with a search through deviantART's stocks and resources category, to start, and quickly found almost the exact images I had in mind.

The three images I found were:

For Rachel Morgan- Corset and Jeans 163 by deviantARTist sd-stock

For the background- Salisbury 10 by LadyxBoleyn

And, later in the process, for the gravestone Rachel's resting her hand on- Gravestone PNG by Alz-Stock-and-Art

Cover Image

Contrast (click to enlarge)

To start with, I started with my base image for Rachel Morgan, and did some basic work for the contrast. While I liked the image as a base, it didn't have the kind of background I was looking for, which as stated above, would be the Gothic cathedral the main cast lives in. 

Background

I proceeded to mask out Rachel from her background, but this unfortunately left her with a floating arm, where there was wood originally to the left.

My solution was fairly quickly come to. In the books, there's many mentions of the graveyard in their backyard, so decided to imply that's where she was sitting. A quick search for a gravestone, and I had a handy way of working with the floating arm. The last part of the step was adding some depth, by masking grass in over her feet to make her seem like she wasn't simply floating there.

Color Correction

Once I had my scene set, I moved on to making it more atmospheric. My first step was color correction. While the figure herself was good, her skin tone was off, and I wanted to make her hair a bit more red than brown. When I'd done those two things, I moved on to darkening the background, to give her more pop from the background. The reason for this was that I planned from the start to have her holding some form of magic in her outstretched hand, and it'd have more impact with a darker background.

Magic's In the Air

Speaking of which, this was where I started adding in the elements of magic to the piece. I began with the eyes, first using a masked group to color shift her eyes to being green. Bright, vibrant green, which took a while to make the way I wanted since the base model's eyes are very dark. Several layers of green and white finally gave her the glowing irises I wanted, and I then added flecking to make it seem like the magic was moving in her eyes.

I applied this same flecking, using an explosive brush I made a while back, when I created the magic in her hands, as well. For the ball itself, I initially just made one layer of green, masked to curve around her fingers, and proceeded to make multiple copies blurred and warped to different degrees. When I had the amount of depth I wanted to it, I used the brush to create flickers casting off from the spell, and added a very transparent layer of green around her face and arms to coat her skin in light.

Adjustments

The final step for the cover image was the adjustments. I started by adding a few overlays, all in the name of making the magic stand out even more. The end result left most of the background very dark, which I planned to use for whitespace when I got to my typography. It also left a stark contrast on Rachel and her magic. The stark white in her magic was actually a pleasant surprise, that I think added to the effect.

With this done, I took my image into InDesign.

Typography

Masthead

My first step once I had the graphic into InDesign was creating the masthead. I knew I wanted a bar across the top 3rd, but beyond that, I didn't necessarily have anything in mind. I quickly found myself in the process of going through the long list of type on my computer. I lucked out when I happened across Wretched, which was a sharp type that also had a fantasy feel to it.

Once I had my font decided on, I laid out the block for the masthead itself. I started with a solid bar of green, and went from there. To it, I overlaid a pair of paper textures by Carrie Stephens Designs, which I got in a large design resources bundle I bought recently. After experimenting with the opacities a bit, I finally got it to be bright enough to work well with the black text. To finish it off, I added in a fake URL and the date of when it would hypothetically be in publication.

Articles

If you haven't read the series, be aware of spoilers.
Once I had the masthead designed, I proceeded to work on the article titles. Obviously, I wanted the main article to be related to the cover, so I decided the magazine had gotten an interview with Rachel Morgan, who in the series is the first demon capable of walking around with the everyday population even during the day.

For the other articles, I had a bit harder of a time. I decided, in the end, to go with a pair of articles that, around the time the interview would've happened, would've made some sense, as the Kalamack mentioned is the genetic engineer that allows her to be the above mentioned demoness. The other article was just for fun. When this was done, though, I still had to design an actual layout.

Layout

To start with, I gave contrast to the main article by matching it to the color of her spell. I then went about rearranging the positions of the articles. I gave the articles more space between them, and decided in the end that leaving them in a straight column was a bit dull. I also added some very slight effects to give the main article a bit more pop. Once I had all of this done, I decided that the color of the photo was a little too dark for my initial idea, so I added a quick overlay to brighten things up, and then it was done.

Result

Overall, I'm pretty happy with this. Considering it's the first thing like this I've done, I'm sure there are things I overlooked, and will come back to to improve on later, but for now, I'm happy letting it rest. Hopefully I keep the trend up over my break.