Tales of the Black Guard, erotica anthology edited by Nobilis Reed
“Nobilis Reed is now accepting submissions for an audio (and possibly ebook) anthology titled “Tales of the Black Guard.”
The basic idea for these stories is laid out in the foundation story, “The Lady in Black,” which is episode 259 of the Nobilis Erotica podcast. These are erotic BDSM stories set in a space opera setting.” (via the description page at the Nobilis Erotica website) (CAUTION: NOT SAFE FOR WORK OR FOR THOSE UNDER EIGHTEEN)
Another first here at Designed By Starla. I’ve never had the occasion to create a cover for erotic fiction, so it was quite nice to be commissioned for this one. I did have some concern that I wouldn’t be doing it right as, generally, that’s not a genre I have a lot of experience with.
I think it’s a very nice looking image and I’m totally in love with this woman’s hair. Who can make this look a reality instead of a Photoshop composite image? I want to wear the universe in my hair too!
If you’re a writer who dabbles in erotica with BDSM themes, you should head over to the last link above. It’s a paying gig ($25 for podcast publication with the possibility for another $25 if it becomes an ebook anthology) so it won’t hurt to give it a shot!
As to the cover itself, lots of blending modes and masking going on here. The woman is a composite image of two photos plus a third for the stars in her hair, with lots of tweaking for skin coloring based on the character description. The biggest thing used here is the blending modes, which basically means the setting for which one layer is blended with the layer below it. This adjusts settings like opacity, color, and which shades and tones show over whatever is below it. It’s a concept that’s easier to show than explain, so I may put up a blog post about the basics of this in the future. Once you know that feature is there, you wonder how you ever lived without it. Seriously. It’s that awesome and completely non-destructive to the image (which means it can be changed without doing anything permanent to the image it effects).
Maybe that’s more info than you wanted, but there it is. Yay for learning stuff!
Leave a Reply