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Have you ever bought a DVD or DVD box-set and thought the cover artwork was terrible and just wanted it changed? Or just wanted rid of all the certificate logos etc? Well I have. There are countless great computer artists out there who have created custom covers for DVDs and it is these people that inspired me to give it a go too. In particular it was a Babylon 5 set of covers that made me want to give it a go... post editted to remove B5 image Anyway, I recently bought the TV series Dark Angel and the cover artwork was terrible, particularly the spines, which is what I hate as they are the bits that are on show all the time. So I did my own covers... edit in: now located further down the threadSo that is my work lately!! I've also done some Star Wars Trilogy ones that can be seen here!!They are the first one I ever tried. Anyone else ever given this a go?
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Rank: Martian Estate Agent
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no but i think i might it looks fun! ^^
Full On Design
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It is quite good fun! Been occupying a lot of my time of late!!
It also does give a bit of satisfaction if you are a DVD collector. Cause when I get the covers printed out, particularly the ones I made, I'll know that I'm the only person to have these covers... unless I upload them to one of many custom dvd cover websites...
Only prob for me is that I got a very old comp, with only a PIII 450 processor, so when working at the high resolutions required for this, it can get quite slow!! You gotta work at 300dpi, equating to something like 3240 x 2175 pixels for a standard dvd case cover!!
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Rank: Martian Estate Agent
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O... why donm't you show them to some big flim company and see what they say it could be a good job for you!
Full On Design
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Heheh nice handywork there!
Hm good idea for me to try on a rainy day XD
It does look quite fun.. The year 7's at my school are doing that as a graphic project.
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Rank: Martian Estate Agent
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Cool pic loopy, i just tryed this great fun, i changed my DVD cover for a more intresting one...great fun!
Full On Design
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That is really good, might have to try that myself, even just to recover a few movie series to make it look more like a box set! Anyway, did you do covers for Dark Angel season 2? I got both series as well and the spines are fairly uninspired! That Bab5 one does look good 
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Rank: Martian Estate Agent
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Yer just had a look at the 'real' covers on amazon these ones should be on them not the 'real' ones!
Full On Design
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Not done season 2 yet, but will do reasonably soon. Just got some little flaws to iron out of the season 1 cover set first. Having a very slow comp doesn't help when dealing with images of this high resolution!!
As you've got the original season 1 and 2, you'll notice I took the pic from the outer box as the main pic on the front of the covers. Gonna do the same for series 2 prob (due to the lack of hi-res stuff that I think is suitable for a front cover), but need to scan it in first. Then edit the pic to remove the official Dark Angel bit on the top left. Is annoying that Jessica's head is in line with it unlike season 1. Will test my artistic abilities a bit more!! The back will be the same style, probably the same pics, but with a different colour tinge - green instead of blue I'd imagine. Don't know what I'm gonna do with the spine for season 2 yet, will have to another look at the hi-res stuff I've got.
Once I've done season 2 I'm gonna make one 6 disc box set for season 1 and one for season 2 for people who are wanting to save shelf space. I'll be making a new spanning spine set for those 2 boxes.
But that is all in due time...
And yeah, the Babylon 5 set is fantastic. Yet to get it printed out, but it looks amazing. He's also done a similar set for thinner dvd boxes as well as lots of other covers. His Star Trek complete TV series (all the spin-offs inc.) is amazing.
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Rogeman - if you can, post a pic of what you did! I created this thread for everyone to show effort they've done!!
And I won't show them to mvie companies for 3 reasons -
1) There are a lot of people who's work I've seen who are infinitely better at this than I am,
2) Companies don't make the art work for the fans, they make them to sell. So the sort of covers that I'd do as a fan/collector wouldn't have the same selling points that the company would probably want. I'd make smaller billings on the front etc...
3) Some sites that host lots of custom DVD cover have been closed down (including one of the biggest sites) by the studios claiming copyright issues or something like that, so most of the sites that are still around have kinda gone anonymous. Almost all are forum based and people can only join by referral. There is no open joining and you can't view content without joining. Any applications for joining a checked through first, usually, that way keeping these sites out of the lime light. Also general custom cover etiquette it appears is that no one ever seems to write out the web address of any of the sites, and only refers to them by a colloquial name. So basically if you don't know the place, you possibly won't find it! So I'm not wanting to get myself or any of these sites that I go to in trouble by showing stuff I've done to the companies!
steviepunk - there a quite a few shops out there selling 3, 4, 5, 6 disc etc DVD boxes so that you can save shelf space... That is what some of the people doing custom covers do, get the individual release movies etc that are part of a series, then shove them all in one box with a new cover.
I'm probably gonna do a Star Wars 6 disc one, to make all the 6 episodes have a similar spine when Ep III is released on DVD... hate it how the spines aren't uniform or anything like that with the current star wars dvds... is ver strange, the companies probably put less effort into the spines, yet more often than not, those are the parts that are on show on people's shelves!
After I've finished Dark Angel, I don't know what I'm gonna do next... will see what's sitting on my shelf that I think desperately needs a make over! Once they've stopped making them, and I have them all, it will possibly be Alias.
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Rank: Martian Estate Agent
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Kwl, are you going to post them (LOl)
Full On Design
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Yeah, I'll post here ones that I do, once I've got them done. Or at least, I'll post previews to them like I have done above, rather than the full size file (which is often >4MB!).
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Rank: Martian Estate Agent
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OMG 4 MB thats like 4 times the size of a MegaBite... that big
Full On Design
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Yeah, it is like 4 times the size of 1MB!!!
Using PSP 9 and a jpeg compression of 1 (minimum) each of the files I've previewed in my first post were about 7MBs. The pspimage file which recorded all the layer info was about 36MB for the back alone!! It is a LARGE memory hogger!
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Rank: Martian Estate Agent
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why don't you make them swf's or gif, or even JPG? to save on space or even PNG?
Full On Design
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The preview files (above) and the final image that I'll print will be jpg with as little compression as possible. These files will generally be about 4MB at least (they are 3140 x 2175 pixel images!!).
When working on them, I use layers extensively and the jpeg format does not support layers (neither does gif and I don't think png does either), so I save it as a pspimage. If I was using photoshop I'd save it as a PSD file... these are generally very large and in the 30MB region (depending on the number of layers, vectors etc) just for the front or back section of the cover.
Don't need to worry about saving space, still got plenty of room on my hd!!
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Rank: Martian Estate Agent
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kk, have much space have you got?
Full On Design
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I've got a 60GB hd... don't use much on it.
Anyway I've updated my season 1 Dark Angel covers. The spines are slightly different and the other changes to the front and back are probably not noticable in these previews.
Edit: previews removed.
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Rank: Martian Estate Agent
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Very nice Kris
Full On Design
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Have now started on season 2... As before I've taken the pic on the outer slipcase as the main pic for the fronts.  Now people like steviepunk that own this set will notice that on the outer slipcase it says "Dark Angel Season Two Collection" on the top left, but it doesn't in my pic. Well, it took me about 5 or so hours, but I managed to erase it using clone brush... Quite pleased with it, if you don't mind me sounding all smug! Edit in: Have now done the back for volume 1 of this season. Much quicker doing this season compared to season 1!! Thank god for templates! 
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