The first bonus mailouts for GameSpite supporters were supposed to have gone in the mail a month ago. They haven’t, yet, and I feel lousy about that pretty much every single day. Truth is, the bonus magnets were ready a month ago; the mini-magazine was written and laid out a month ago. The problem, though, is that it needs a bit of art, and I swore off drawing a while back — for good reason, since my artwork was never great to begin with and has degraded horribly over the years. But it needs a cover, and it would feel false to have someone else draw it, so I’ve been stalled out at the point actually committing pen to paper.
The good news, I guess, is that I finally choked back my bile long enough to hack something out tonight. While it’s not particularly good, at least it’s done and I can get this issue out of the way soon. (And put the second one on its proper schedule. And give it a cover made entirely with text.) Anyway, my apologies in advance to any children or pets who are left emotionally scarred by the sight of the results.
Now that Issue #1’s cover is done, you can get guest artists to do the cover, because it’s not nearly as false to have a ‘guest’ doing it because the norm is a Parish-drawn cover. This holds true even if you never draw another cover.
You should have a contest for the next cover, you’d get everyone in the forums excited about the next issue and get out of drawing it.
Merus is right, especially if getting the over done on time might continue to trip you up in the future.
You should consider doing pixel art for the covers. The telebunny was a pretty endearing piece and I am sure you could create a picture with a lot less anguish involved.
Pixel art’s not a bad idea. Don’t think it would photocopy too well, though, unless I went for the ZX Spectrum approach.
How about using your spiffy new camera to take a game-related photo as the cover? Most professional journals tend to put very random pictures on their covers. My favorite was the journal Cell getting the mangaka of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure to draw their receptor cell in action. That one was a drawing, but you get the idea.
You guys are way smarter than I am.