HALLMAN: Starship Plangite

As a child, still living on Earth, Jonathan Fargates was told by his mother the story of a ghost ship drifting through space. After passing through an undetected shield raised by an advanced alien civilization, as he remembered the story, the bodies of all its tripulation were vaporized, leaving no survivors. All of the subsequent attempts to retrive the spaceship, his mother told him, have failed with catastrophic results. None of the ships sent to retrieve came back, leading to the belief that the ship somehow still carried the consciousnesses of the members of its tripulation, and they attacked and destroyed anyone and everyone who went to their rescue. That ultimately led to the prohibition by the Conglomerate for any ship to enter the sector where the ship could be found.

The ship's name had almost been completely wiped from captain Fargates's memory, only resurfacing while he was passing through the supposedly banned sector---whose ban he knew fully well wasn't present anywhere on the Conglomerate's records---and stumbled upon a ship of a decomissioned class which happened to be the same of the ship from his mother's story. He attempted to contact the ship and, to his surprise, he received an answer.

"This is captain Fargates of the spaceship SS Fortuna", he said, "identify yourself".

The image that came on screen was very unclear, almost completely obscured by static. Captain Fargates could barely identify the figure of an old man so thin he thought for a split second he had seen a skull rather than a living human being. The man wore a captain's uniform, there wasn't a single hair on his head, his deep eye sockets made him look like he was over a hundred years old. He seemed much too old and frail to be a ship's captain. He began to speak in a surprisingly young, deep voice.

"This is captain Stuart of the SS Plangite".

I've recently finished watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. I might have still been watching it when I wrote this, or I may have done so soon after I've finished, I can't quite remember. I wrote this short fake excerpt as quickly as I could and as soon as it came to me. I think it might work well if I wrote this concept as a novella.

You may notice the change in author name from River to R. K. Hallman. Same author, slightly different pen name. In future covers, I plan on swithcing between the two names depending on which one I feel suits better the cover.

TRAVERSE: Somewhat Alone (2nd redesign)

Font used: Junction.

Another redesign of "Somewhat Alone", this time much closer to the original design, only with more readable text and better colors.

HUMMEL: Little Miss Explosion

Fonts used: Allura; Edo; League Gothic.

A redesign of Hummel's "Lady Explosion", under a different title. I didn't like the original one -- that is both the cover and the title --, so when I was redesigning the cover, I started thinking of a backstory for the main character, and I ended up deciding she would be a 9 year old beauty pageant contestant (10 by the time the story ends, her 10th birthday being a major plot point), and the new title came naturally from that. I'm not entirely sure where the idea came from, but I liked it, so I stuck with it.

The title sounds like it's a reference to Little Miss Sunshine, and it could be, though I have never watched the movie and only have a passing understading of its plot. Why I would be thinking of that movie at all is beyond me.

TRAVERSE: Somewhat Alone (redesign)

(Image) // Font used: Junction.

This is a redesign of Traverse’s “Somewhat Alone”. Actually, I intended to use this picture in the original design, but I was unable to get a result which I liked. Then I decided to try again, and this time the final result looks pretty good. (Although there are some flaws, especially the border that doesn’t quite look like it should.)

HUMMEL: Lady Explosion

Fonts Used: Linden Hill; Edo.

A girl named Judith discovers that some objects she touches start to spontaneously vibrate. After some experimenting she figures out how to willing make it happen. Everything she makes vibrate does so permanently. A few days later, all the objects in which Judith used her powers start to explode.

Hey, I am back! It’s been a long time. Actually I had the idea for this particular cover a long time ago, but I didn’t want to draw it myself, but here it is.

HALLMAN: We Are the Aliens - 4

Fonts used: M+ 1m; Fanwood.

The gift the alienkind gave us, the humankind, had revealed some extraordinary facts. It was impossible to believe it, yet all the evidence we needed was there all the time – we just didn’t see it. We knew they could breathe in our atmosphere. We were able to communicate with them. It’s a wonder we didn’t figure it out by ourselves.

And this is the end of the We are The Aliens tetralogy. I think this cover is the worst of all of them, and at the same time, it took more work to finish than the others. I made two alternative designs, though, and I also played a little with the colors.

Oh, and I have updated the last post on this series. Now it has a fictional excerpt.

A few days ago, I posted a rather bad drawing on my tumblr that would serve as starting point for this cover. That’s it, I just wanted to link to that drawing.


P.S.: That’s it, I ran out of ideas. So no new cover for probably a really long time. Maybe I will still update this blog once or twice, with redesigns of old covers or something like that.

TRAVERSE: Half Awake

Font used: DejaVu Sans Mono.

I really like the design, but I’m not quite sure I got the colors right. While the blue/yellow contrast works very well – and those colors are (somewhat) related to night and day, respectively – it’s also true that it’s “a bit” over-used. Because of that, I ended up making two alternative color schemes.

I really don’t know which is the best one, but I really love the darkness of the first alternative.

Oh, the title to this particular non-existent book comes from the song Fake Empire by The National.