I'd take out the woman, you put her on the far opposite side which opens up a big empty space in the middle. She is also not wearing outdoor clothes, which throws off the mood.
Also try putting the Cyberpulp Adventures above with a colon.
Putting it up with a colon will look weird, but I do agree that removing the girl would be a good idea and you can move the character a little closer to the center and adjust the highlighting which will focus the contrast a little more.
As for the title and subtitle I like the last one the best but you also have to think about what you are trying to make prominent. You need a balance between name recognition and the object identification. You might want to tinker around with splitting the title and subtitle between the top and bottom, although it's hard to say if something is going to work until you can visually see it.
If you want to keep it somewhat similar to the way it is now, change the ordering of subtitle and title and flip those lines at the end. Moving from large to small looks kinda awkward.
Another idea is maybe making the title larger and putting the subtitle at the bottom and moving that subtext to the left of the character, but I think striking a balance between the title and subtitle and centering the character a little more will make it look the best.
EDIT: I think it look good actually with the girl behind him and offset a little like you have.
Throw some curves on that bad boy. Higher contrast will make it look more like old film stock. Also, I like blue better than the yellow. Light emitting things like neon signs tend to be almost white in the center, and then have a saturated glow around them. The yellow is the same medium yellow even at it's brightest point, which is incorrect.
Blue is cool but Penny Arcade already ganked the colour, and on top of that it's a very clean and modern sort of light tone. The tone of robotics and cybernetics is a little more retro in this, more like old car headlights and stuff.
But, wowzers, the contrast bump really works. Did you just do that with the contrast/brightness tool or what?
You can do it all sorts of ways. Adjustment layers are usually the way to go. I used "curves" which allows me to play with the contrast without actually changing the picture layer underneath.
I hated psych and soc because it all just was basically conjecture.
What, like every other scientific field isn't?
Yeah but while human nature is somewhat predictable it's not calculable, much less so than something like the stock market I think.
I don't know what exactly you mean by "calculable", but I'm not particularly convinced of the truth of this statement.
Oh of course there is real research and statistical "evidence" and that that all changes through very short periods of time. There are some pretty well "knowns" but those knowns can usually be gleaned from day to day living.
Be wary of hindsight bias when making claims like this.
open_sketchbook, are you planning on selling your book or just distributing to friends? If you're selling it, either e-book or printed, you need to make sure that the image reads well and has appeal at thumbnail size. If "Cyberpulp Adventures" is the name tying several books together, consider making it the publisher name. Then it could read, Hard Boiled by Cyberpulp Adventures. By the way, did you know Hard Boiled is the name of a Frank Miller and Geof Darrow comic?
Personally I feel that the title "Hard Boiled" is too close to the edges of the image. Also, try experimenting with your fog extending past the edge of the image, right now it looks enclosed by the artificial frame of black edge.
I hated psych and soc because it all just was basically conjecture.
What, like every other scientific field isn't?
Yeah but while human nature is somewhat predictable it's not calculable, much less so than something like the stock market I think.
I don't know what exactly you mean by "calculable", but I'm not particularly convinced of the truth of this statement.
What I mean by it is stuff like Creamsteak's post where people don't often act correctly when they know they are being watched, which I know they try very hard to prevent through various methods. I'm also just voicing my opinion based on two social science classes that I took in college and have no other evidence besides my experience
Oh of course there is real research and statistical "evidence" and that that all changes through very short periods of time. There are some pretty well "knowns" but those knowns can usually be gleaned from day to day living.
Be wary of hindsight bias when making claims like this.
I always ask myself that question before making such claims. Also it might be due to me being a smidge more observant than all the other people who were in that class, which was mostly bros and hoes, and sadly may have been dumbed down based on that audience, which was also a problem with such classes and have colored my view.
Being a tech Internet person, I have no problems with acronyms and initializms being used all over the place. For some reason WIP (work in progress) bothers me. I have no logical explanation for this.
What I mean by it is stuff like Creamsteak's post where people don't often act correctly when they know they are being watched, which I know they try very hard to prevent through various methods.
I didn't know or care what they were actually performing the experiments for before they started. They just explain it to you in the exit, and I happened to (twice) be a representative example of the contradiction of the hypothesis (and there were flaws in the alcohol related one). And in the third... well... I was both incredibly stubborn and extremely bored and I hate those sort of tests. Almost as much as I hate analogy questions.
On that note, analogy questions are easy... but also bullshit.
What I saw of it looked pretty okay. I want to have more good X-men cartoons, so I should watch more of it. I remember it started with the Pheonix exploding and then Cyclops being emo (when is he not, right?)
I just realized that I have a computer capable of running a PS2 emulator as well as a PS2 controller and an adapter. As someone who has never owned a Sony console, this means I'll be able to play a bunch of new games. Fuck yeah.
Okay it sucks being Germany in Diplomacy. I got gangraped by russia and france (didn't help they were the same guy and I was also playing Turkey). England probably couldn't have saved me because my last army was on my final supply center and Austria-Hungary wasn't in a position to help (those two were a third dude, there was no Italy)
It sucks being Germany in any Euro-war. One of Bismarck's rules of war was "Make sure you don't get gangraped." That is definitely a literal and very faithful translation from the German.
Comments
How's this?
As for the title and subtitle I like the last one the best but you also have to think about what you are trying to make prominent. You need a balance between name recognition and the object identification. You might want to tinker around with splitting the title and subtitle between the top and bottom, although it's hard to say if something is going to work until you can visually see it.
If you want to keep it somewhat similar to the way it is now, change the ordering of subtitle and title and flip those lines at the end. Moving from large to small looks kinda awkward.
Another idea is maybe making the title larger and putting the subtitle at the bottom and moving that subtext to the left of the character, but I think striking a balance between the title and subtitle and centering the character a little more will make it look the best.
EDIT: I think it look good actually with the girl behind him and offset a little like you have.
Anyone know what happened to that Automata comic the Penny Arcade guys did? Did it ever get fully realized?
Throw some curves on that bad boy. Higher contrast will make it look more like old film stock. Also, I like blue better than the yellow. Light emitting things like neon signs tend to be almost white in the center, and then have a saturated glow around them. The yellow is the same medium yellow even at it's brightest point, which is incorrect.
But, wowzers, the contrast bump really works. Did you just do that with the contrast/brightness tool or what?
How's this?
Personally I feel that the title "Hard Boiled" is too close to the edges of the image. Also, try experimenting with your fog extending past the edge of the image, right now it looks enclosed by the artificial frame of black edge.
I also get annoyed when people pronounce SQL as "Sequel", I'm thinking it's related, but I can't figure out why.
On that note, analogy questions are easy... but also bullshit.