HQCovers recently surpassed 100000 views and I thought I’d take this opportunity to have a little resume and see where I’m from, where I’m at and where I’m going.
The Past
I started creating soundtrack covers in 2006 after I bought the iPod Video, the first one to handle cover artworks. High quality scans were a rarity back then, so I began making them myself in glorious 500×500 pixels! And because I’m a kind person I shared them via the now defunct Amazon customer image galleries. Some of them are still online, for example here’s a nice one that shows my early typewriting skills.
After some time I had a proper collection of custom covers and of course my desire to present them in the right way grew steadily. It was time for a website. But not one of those generic web galleries (I had one of those too), but something a bit more original. I ran a self-created and self-hosted website for a while. Complete with a dynamic image database and fancy web 2.0 functions, such as full screen views and random image transitions. But updates and also visitor stats were poor. And at the end of the day administrating it took way too much time. Also, it was ugly as fuck!
The Present
Fast forward into 2015. It’s been almost three years since I’ve started this blog and I couldn’t be happier with what I’ve achieved so far. In 86 posts I’ve uploaded 764 covers (not counting drafts and variations) of which 644 were customs, 33 remakes and 87 originals. Especially the last few months were exceptionally awesome.
There was a new peak day on December 8 with over 100 visitors and 1257 views when I published The Battle of the Five Armies. And I’ve also designed my first truly original artwork for Karim Elmahmoudi’s Nightfall. But these are just a few cornerstones of the overall progress of the site. All in all it’s going great! And I’m already working on some exciting new stuff.
The Future
I was thinking about a few changes recently, which may or may not come to life in the next few months. For one thing I thought about a design change for the site. Right now it features a plain and stripped down design, both in aesthetics and mechanics. What I’m missing are a few spots to showcase older noteworthy entries or a fixed area to feature selected specials like the ongoing Alien series.
Beside that I was thinking about guest entries as well… there may be potential here. Also, an extension of the site to non-soundtrack covers would be within the bounds of possibility. After all, I was far-seeing enough to have chosen a non-specific blog title back then. We’ll see, I guess only time can tell.
To make up for all that boring nonsense I’ve written now, here’s also something pleasing for your eyes. I’ve already piled up several unused designs again and thought this might be the perfect occasion to make them public. For detail information please have a look at the image descriptions.
What else can I say, other than have fun! And thanks a million for coming back again and again!
HQCovers 
[…] April of last year I was contemplating the future of HQCovers. I’ve stated some ideas about redesigning and restructuring this […]
LikeLike
[…] The unwanted brainchilds, the dispassionate requests, the okay’ish ones I guess and the late comers. Also the lone wolves that’d definitely deserve a single post but somehow didn’t end up in one. They all suffer the same fate: Being dumped into this consolation prize of a blog entry, without the chance of ever being the single featured image on the front page. For the third time now. […]
LikeLike