Lost Covers, Vol. 2

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…

“The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies” by Howard Shore

Day in, day out there are always two specific entries in my page ranks, that stand out from the crowd. My two cover series for An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation of Smaug. They generate by far the most traffic on my site. Strictly speaking they rule out everything else when it comes to site stats, as the following screenshots impressively prove: Posts Clicks Search terms So one could say that Howard Shore’s Middle Earth music dominates my little blog right from its beginning. I wonder what movie/score is going to fill that spot by the end of next year? Probably Star Wars. Or my old Lord of the…

Lost Covers, Vol. 1

I don’t know why, but a few days ago, late at night, I was thinking about all my “failed” attempts at creating well-crafted cover art. I was visiting the Final Fantasy Shrine Forums, browsing through all that awesome cover art posted there and I wondered how much time the people over there invest in this creative, time-consuming hobby. Are they as nitpicky as me? Everyone loves his own creations, otherwise we wouldn’t publish it, but for my part it sometimes degenerates a bit. I often spend hours on one single image. I’ve created one cover with thirty-three different font types,…

“SE7EN” by Howard Shore

Grunge, filth and even more grunge. The cover series to Howard Shore’s magnificent score to David Fincher’s cult thriller is characterized by its ghastly apparition. Though it never really got a proper release (what a shame!), there’ve been a few different soundtrack albums circling around. And I’ve remade all of their respective album artworks. First the commercial release by TVT Records in the US-American (#1) and European (#2) version. And then the rare bootleg, apparently scattered among movie buffs by Concorde in 1995 (#3). I’ve redesigned and altered them very slightly and added a texture to #2 to give it a little more depth. My customs below are mostly…

“The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” by Howard Shore

Over the last couple months I slowly started working on The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, knowing there would be a rich bouquet of source material I’ll be able to choose from. But the surprising lack thereof made it a lot more difficult to come up with high-quality stuff. In my opinion the official posters lack of devotion and imagination. I can’t explain why Warner made no use of such great locations like “Dol Guldur” or the eponymous desolation of Smaug. So this time I had to grab a little deeper into my box of tricks. Yet, incredibly, I ended…