Alright, anyone here like making their own covers? Because I do. It gives me confidence that my cover is unique. And any cover I don't make is either an in-game screen short or meme. If it doesn't have my watermark means that it isn't a permanent cover, or it's "The 'Okay' Prince," in which I took a screen shot of someone else's picture of the sky because I thought it would fit well... I still feel bad about that one..

     Anyways! Let's go over what you need and the how's about that too.

#1. DRAWING

     Now, I am most certainly not an artist. The only cover I actually drew was "'Incident'" as well as the faces on "Relen." Other than that I don't have much experience. However, that doesn't mean I haven't developed a strategy.

Things you need for my strategy:
1. Paper
2. Pencil
3. Computer, preferably a portable laptop
4. Printer, with scanning capabilities
5. A cord to attach the printer and laptop, however it is possible to do it wirelessly with some
6. Okay that's kind of it.
7. Oh wait, you also might want to have a drawing app of some kind

     From the things listed itself it should be pretty easy to tell where I am going with this. First off, I get a piece of paper and pencil and draw what I want. Note: make sure you don't color it in. Just look at the Relen cover to see how that turns out. Second, put ze paper into le printer, and scan it onto le laptop. Okay, almost done. And lastly, use a drawing app to color it in, add some style and effects, and other cool stuff. I would suggest you use Gimp, since it is free and easy to use. You just need to know all the little things which are easily provided in tutorials. ..Like this one:

https://youtu.be/Q8C0LJPpr64

The person who made this tutorial was even kind enough to go through the downloading process as well as provide the right link in the description.

     Of course you might be wondering why even bother drawing it on paper at all. Well, I am not good at all when it comes to drawing with a mouse. I can only do Minecraft weapons and skins that way. And that is just about it for drawing. :]

     *cracks knuckles* Time for the fun part. Animation.

     Now with the right tools animation is actually not as hard as it might first seem. I was lucky enough to be given beginner Blender tutorials that now would actually cost money. And those 10 or so videos, while not helping much with Minecraft animation, like what I wanted, did help me so that when I finally did find Minecraft animation tutorials, I was quick to follow along. But you don't need expensive beginner tutorials to learn stuff. Most of what I learned was by just jumping in and trying to do things my own way.

So here's what you need:
1. A computer, obviously
2. Blender or Mineimator, both are free and both I have used
3. Mineways, a Blender add-on
4. McPrep, also a Blender add-on
5. Rigs, for Blender

     Mineimator has most of that kind of stuff already in it, which is why it is the go to starter. But that is just because Blender is made so anyone could animate anything. There are very little limits with Blender, which is why I like it so much. However with Blender it is also important to note that if you are using an old outdated or even just not very beefy computer, then it could crash depending on the rigs, render sampling, and other technical stuff that takes a little bit to figure out.
     To start your Mineimator journey, here's the tutorial I used when I was first starting out:

Okay actually I couldn't find that tutorial. I guess it was really outdated or something because it was like 5 years ago. But the same guy who made the one I watched made a new one, so you can use that. And I watched through it and it is actually a lot better put together than the one I watched. And the same guy has a bunch of other tutorials on other more detailed topics.

https://youtu.be/LKvnpiIDhw8

And there is also this guy, who I have been subscribed to for quite some time even though I don't even use Mineimator anymore. He does a lot of more detailed tutorials as well:

https://youtu.be/WbOh6pbJrLI

     I honestly really like the Mineimator style, but never got really far with Mineimator since I was just really bad at it. Surprise surprise, Blender turned out to be easier for me somehow. Probably just because back then I didn't have access to so many different Mineimator tutorials, while I did have access to plenty of Blender ones.

     So, onto Blender.

     The first thing would be to note that there are many different rigs and styles that involve Blender. And while over the time I have pretty much made my own thing by mixing together all I have learned, I'll provide the tutorials that helped me the most and really just set me on my way.

https://youtu.be/Ik7jPH2sZNk

     This is BPS, Black Plasma Studios. The community that basically brought me to where I am. The link is to a series. I actually learned from their first series, before this one was even made, but when the new ones came out they were the ones I went to for help. I basically memorized them and can tell you when and where certain things are in which episodes and generally where they are. But the episodes were clearly planned out and have everything they will teach in the beginning of each video. So yeah, learning how to animate definitely takes dedication, but so does everything else with rewarding conclusions.

     In short, I would like to say that it is more than the tutorials that taught me how to animate. It helped a lot, but quite a bit of what I learned was from other animators in the same boat as me. I started out just following the tutorials, but found it kind of hard and eventually started losing interest. Well, not really. But everyone I talked to about it had no idea what I was saying and when I needed help there was no one to ask.
     So it helped me A LOT when I was invited to Discord, a social app for gamers mostly. But BPS's largest social place is there, and when I found that server, I also found tons of other animators who were all in the same boat as me. And we all made pictures and showed them off on that server where others could comment on them, and if we needed help all we had to do was ask and someone more experienced would help. And from there I even made friends with other animators and joined other servers with the smaller communities of animators. And now I am a main animator working on a series of my own. Simply, because I wanted to get better, and not give up.

Final tips:

     So that's kind of it for now. If you make a cover, make sure to put your watermark on it too and even the title if you want. For some books the title is the main point, but for others there is either no title, or closer to a hidden title like "Happy Papy." I find that sometimes a title detracts from the image, but that's just me.

     Another form of covers is pictures, but that is an entirely different thing. The only covers I can remember where I actually took a picture would be "Hazel," and "More Than Math." And that is pretty simple stuff.

     Alright, that's it! If any of this helped you then let me know. And have a nice day. :]

Sep. 8, 2019