I’m not an artist. The two resources I’ve found most useful are:
CoolText - to generate words in a PNG to overlay a title. There are other word-font generation sites, but this is the one I’ve used the most.
PIXLR - a free online photo/graphics editing tool that has layers, effects, and allows cropping/positioning/adjustment for those of us who don’t have Photoshop.
Remind me not to get on the bad side of your imagination…
Depending on how literal you want to go, there are also AI Image Generators online. That might suffice, unless the horror-vacui style doesn’t suit…
a spotted dog chewing on a baby doll head in the style of Photo taken on an iPhone:
(blurred because…eesh!)
a glass skull in a rusty wheelbarrow, in the style of Unreal Engine
Errrrm…
A little better?
I like images with tension in them. Purely pretty art is not very interesting to me. I painted little lines of ants with enamel paint all over the flowered china I inherited from my grandmother, and it’s much nicer now.
Wow. I doubt there’s much non-commercial IF with original painted cover art!
My dirty secret is that I do all my cover art in Google Slides…
Well ok, that’s not quite true, but I find it makes it really easy to noodle around and explore different concepts/play around with the composition. Once I have a concept I’m happy with I’ll move to working in a real image editor.
(Note: I am not actually good at art and cannot draw, so take all my advice with a grain of salt)
Edit: thanks @HanonO for fixing my mistake 
[EDIT: moved by Mod 
]
I’m going to pimp Canva a little here. It has a lot for free that is very useful: excellent text overlay, a background remover and eraser, and a lot of easy-to-use features. You can pay to unlock more tools, but the free version is excellent and user-friendly. I use it for all my graphic design needs because it’s largely idiot-proof. They do have a lot of stock photos and clip art, but I’m not sure what the IP rules are, so I use my own art and photos. I particularly like the background remover that allows you to overlay images.
I haven’t seen this mentioned as of yet in the thread- an in-browser editor option is Photopea. It’s basically like Photoshop in lay out and capability- it even handles PSD and AI files! You could in theory use it to draw in as well, though like Photoshop I think most users would find it more handy for editing pictures.
Some free Stock image options would be Pexels (which contains video and really nice photographs, with an option to double check the licensing but generally don’t require attribution and are free to use for all the stuff on there) and Pixabay (which is similar, though it does note explicitly on the images if they’re available for commercial use as well). These aren’t transparent background-ed photos, but they are really pretty, and as long as you don’t get too niche in subject matter you could probably find something workable from there.
I vote that the next Ectocomp be renamed AmandaComp. Rule 1: Use one of these images as the focal point of your game.
(Or just a quick Horror-jam on the side.)
Sorry for derailing. Now back to our scheduled program.
Huh, I hadn’t even thought about cover art - does every entry need to have one?
Presumably anything public domain is OK?
I don’t think you have to have one, but I will say my eye tends to gloss over games without cover art. And I would think anything in the public domain would be fair game. Or you can ask here for an original photo or drawing of whatever you like, and maybe somebody can provide it!
You can search “free stock images,” but make sure that you check individually what the license requirements are - just because you search for “free” images doesn’t mean all your results will be free.
Requirements may be listed for each image or a website may have a blanket licensing FAQ. Some say “free for noncommercial use”. Or if you see a Creative Commons (CC) license, (CC-BY) means you have to credit the artist. (CC-0) means completely free, no restrictions, and (CC-NC) means free for noncommercial use (you’re not selling it.)
To add on to this, Google Images does allow you to filter results by license type. The filters are either “Creative Commons (all types)” or “everything else” so you still have to dig into the results a bit, but it’ll make things easier to start.
Try going through your old photos. I often find a building or landscape that could work after a bit of image hacking.
Our you could put out a request. Someone might have something to donate that’s related.
Thank you all. I did a search in Wikimedia Commons and found an image at Creative Commons 4.0 which looks great for my purposes. I’ve just got the organisers’ email which states that there will be a place to acknowledge the authorship of the cover image, so it looks like plain sailing!
All right, help, I no know how do art good. Is this at least interesting and readable?
E: the submission guidelines say no more than 600px height/width, but the website seems to end up displaying them at 300px
The title looks great! That said, I’m having trouble reading the byline - maybe bump the font size up a few points?
I really like the image and the lettering. My only confusion is my eye is first drawn to the word RENO - which is centered in the biggest and clearest font and most eye-catching color and is not the title of the game.
Your title should be the main focus if there’s other lettering in the image. You’ve spaced everything so it’s all readable at 100% brightness and that doesn’t guide they eye on a quick glance. Your title is not in a prominent “third” of the image. The rest of the lettering is good for context, but should be scenery and needn’t be so … readable.
One possibility is move your title down to the center to obscure and overlap the word “Reno” (also center the byline and make it bigger) and then darken or blur or blow-out (somehow) the background image (apply a gradient fadeout at the bottom or vignette around your title) so the scenery is de-emphasized or hazy in the background.
Make me work to pick out “Reno - the biggest little city…” after I’ve read the title.
Depending where your image is shown, the website may be hard-limiting the size of the cover art as thumbnails. You might want to reformat it as a square or almost-square - you’ve got an image that’s twice as wide as it is high, so at 300x300, it’s got to compress the vertical proportionally to display your entire image width without distorting it.
