Cover Designs Not Satisfactory

The latest word on the cover designs for Killer of Killers and Killer Eyes is this: they are not satisfactory. Not to me. And I sure hope that matters to Melange.

It turned out that for some reasons that I really don't understand, they cannot use my doctored image, the one I posted with the caption "KOK Final Cover 2." I don't want to get into the reasons why they said that. But whatever, they said they can't.

So I got the artist's latest effort, and it was not satisfactory. I told her as much and explained in great detail what it was that I didn't like, what it was that I wanted, and what it was she needed to do. I even gave her some options.

For one, if she can't fix that skull nose hole as well as I did, then get another skull image to use. And for two, if she can't make that martial artist silhouette look the way I made it look in KOK Final Cover 2, then find another martial artist image to use, but this time not a guy who's so skinny.

I explained that Trent Smith, the main character in Killer of Killers is a muscular guy. Like I made him look in KOK Final Cover 2. He looks like a football player, as he's described in the book. The design I got from the Melange artist looks like a middle school boy, like he's only twelve or thirteen years old. That just won't do. Even the final design for Killer Eyes turned out to be subpar. It didn't have the same background fire that the original one had, and that was a shame. It turned out to be something I could not approve.

So right now, I'm not too optimistic. Don't know exactly what I'm going to do about it. Maybe see what the next effort looks like, and then, if I'm still not satisfied, just tell them to forget that design altogether and start over from scratch. Meaning come up with something completely different.

I think the artists were under the impression that Trent Smith was a skinny martial artist, like, say, Bruce Lee, or Jet Li, or those kind of guys. Apparently, they never read the book. But I've explained it to them now, so hopefully it will be more like he's supposed to look. Like in KOK Final Design 2. I said to copy it. Exactly. Or find a new image. We'll see.