First and foremost, the Comet Jack logo was designed by Phineas X. Jones, for the first book. So that will stick around, of course, to keep the series unified. The red 2 is all me, so don't blame him for that. I also pasted in the star field he created for the first book, so Phineas deserves much credit. But again, none of the blame.Next I took a photo of my son's hand. I removed the background, stretched out some of digits, played with the color and contrast and such, and then painted a texture over it. I found a set of free fish/reptile scales brushes here. Thanks, Tijo! I used some other tricks to play with lighting, add shadows, wrap the scales a bit. Oh, and generate webbing of course.
NASA provided the ocean-world planet. I searched for "ocean and clouds" on their Great Images in NASA website. I pretty much pasted that on as is. Which ocean-world is that? It's actually the one we live on, though here it's standing in for an alien world. Thanks, Earth!
There's still more work to do on the cover, but I think it's coming together. If you have any advice, please leave it in the comments. When you stare at something for awhile, you tend to miss the obvious, so please feel free to point anything out.
