Wattmag Issue #5

October Cover Makeover Reveal

• The colour scheme, while vibrant and eye-catching, has missed the opportunity to capitalise on the title (i.e. by using lots of green). This is one way to make your cover really, really memorable. Think, for example, T-Swizzle's 'Red' album

• The main character is missing, further suggesting that this is a FanFic about Tom, rather than a Marvel Universe FanFic feat. Loki and starring an entirely new character (Caitlyn)

Some things that the original cover has in its favour:

• Like I mentioned above, it has bright, vibrant colours that are really eye-catching

• The designer has done a solid job blending the images into a cohesive scene

• I like the Art Deco font choices—very evocative of Old Hollywood glamour, while also hinting at the SciFi/Fantasy elements of the story

Overall I would say that the original cover is actually fairly decent, it just doesn't quite hit the mark in terms of representing the story within.

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The Makeover

My main goals with this makeover were to really bring out the SciFi/Fantasy aspects of the story (and move away from the Celeb. FanFic vibe), bring the focus towards the female main character as the protagonist, and capitalise on 'Emerald' as a colour scheme.

I started with the protagonist, Caitlin. I had a picture in my mind of a woman on a red carpet with flashing bulbs (the story starts with her attending her first awards ceremony), and I knew that would leave me a lot of negative space to work with for the other elements. In some of that negative space I added some flashes of light/sparkles (technically called 'bokeh'—the more you know, etc.) in the bottom left hand corner to represent both the flash of cameras on the red carpet and the 'twinkle' of Fantasy / magic.

Next was bringing in the green. I downloaded a picture of raw emerald and played with the saturation and shadows. This gave an excellent colour (obvs), and also an awesome crystalline texture that reminds me a lot of the Rainbow Bridge in the movies.

Because the FanFic aspect is Marvel's representation of Loki, I looked at how to represent him without encroaching on copyrighted designs and intellectual property. To start with, I searched for graphics featuring the character. The key points I noticed were lots of green (hooray!), a lot of black and lots of fog/smoke. Some other icons I found in the images were the Rainbow Bridge and lightning (associated with Thor/Mjölnir). There was also, of course, Loki's spear and horned helmet. I had to rule out using those, however, as their designs are copyrighted by... Disney? (Who makes those movies??). Instead I looked into some of the more traditional symbols associated with Loki and the other Norse gods. Runes were one option, but what really spoke to me was a motif of two snakes intertwined into twisted 'S'.