Hello! This is my first cover book, so be gentle. Here is where I will be explaining the rules, concepts, and such.

RULES

1. No explicit covers. I think this goes without saying, but you never know.

2. I will only majorly remake your cover three times, after that, I'm sorry, but I can't do anything. This doesn't include small changes, like fonts, colors, one image, etc. 

3. Do not spam me for updates, I'm busy. I have a job, a social life, and things to do outside of wattpad. I might not answer right away. On the other hand, I could answer within seconds.

4. If I make you a cover, and if you use it, you must complete payment. If you don't use the cover, It's fine, I get it, but payment is still much appreciated as I took the time to try and create something for you.

5. Please be specific with your wants, I can't do anything with "take creative license!" or "I want part of it to be green, but that's it!". Additionally, I might not be able to create the exact cover you want. I'm using non-copyrighted images so it's a bit hard to find exact matches. 

6. ADD THIS BOOK TO YOUR LIBRARY! When I finish your cover, I will post it in a new chapter. You have to comment on THAT chapter to claim your book cover, so I assume you'd want to be notified when it goes up.

CONCEPTS

First is the cover type. There are three categories, and for people who don't know them, it can be hard to understand. Underneath are some examples. 

MINIMALISTIC - These covers use only simple images, or fonts only. I would consider a cover minimalistic if it had one or no images, or less than three main colors.

SIMPLE - These are my favorite covers to make. These have around 1-3 images in them depending on the complexity. From right to left these have 3, 1, 3, and 1. The difference between the 1 image simple covers and the 1 image minimalistic covers is that the simple covers have images that are of real places or people, while minimalistic covers will only have simple or geometric shapes. 

MANIPULATIVE - These covers have 3+ images in them, although that isn't a hard rule. They usually take a little more skill to make look realistic. For example, I might photoshop different clothing onto a model, or completely change facial features. I can change hair color, eye color, pretty much anything. I've been working with photoshop for about four years, and have even done some professional work (even though I'm 16).  For example, in the left-most cover, I photoshopped the boy's complete outfit, added a new arm to the space suit, and gave him a new neck. In the right-most image I put new clothing on both models and changed the lighting completely. The middle cover actually has 5 different images melded together.

Another concept that's important are technical terms. I'll go over some basic ones first.

FONT - This is a pretty simple one, I won't show an example, but it's how your words appear. Fonts are vital to portraying the mood of a story. There's also some taboo fonts that people still use, comic sans, papyrus, curls MT, and Broadway are some examples. Therefore, it's important to use the correct fonts. 

Script fonts are curly and look like handwriting. They're usually used for teen fiction or romance.

Straight or simple fonts are easy to read, and can convey any genre, from horror to slice-of-life. 

Decorative fonts are fun and specific, like the letters appearing like broken glass, or in the example cover above, perfect target, where the word "TARGET" has a bullet going through it. 

CLIPPING -  This is a fun effect in photoshop that I use a lot.  I use it to make text look like it's a picture. For an example, you can look at the books "LEVITY" and "Traveling heart syndrome" above. In more complicated language, if you have two layers in an image, it will take the top layer and make it so you can only see the top layer where the bottom one is. Don't worry if it's confusing, just know that you can "clip" a picture onto text to make it cooler. I also use it in the cover of this book!

CUT OUT - This is a term mostly used in manipulative covers, but I can cut out a certain part of an image from the whole thing. Using this, I can take people and put them into different backgrounds. This is harder if the background is complex, and easiest if the background is plain white or black.

LAYER - In most images you see on a daily basis, there's only one layer. When I'm using photoshop, I usually have from 1-15 layers. These are essentially images that are on top of each other, and the top ones show over the bottom ones. Think of it as cutting out pictures and pasting them on top of another. 

That should cover any of the jargon I use, some of you might find this very familiar, but others might be completely lost. That's what's wonderful about wattpad, you get people from every point of life, from young kids to full fledged adults. If you knew everything cool! If you didn't, you learned something! Awesome!