Cover Stuff

Warning: I'm going to ramble as I think through this problem.

I have a novel coming out Real Soon Now that is book two of The Dragons of Harbor Crag series. The book is written. It's with my proofreader (Hi, Eric!). But I need a cover...

Book One

The first book, Dragon Freehold, started out as a Kindle Vella (RIP) serial. Using one of my three hundred credits on DepositPhotos, I purchased this image (a 3D render by an account called digitalstorm):

I liked the vibe (though it would have been better if she wasn't wearing lingerie, *big sigh about the clothing available for renders*). A little editing and I came up with this:

It's a serviceable cover — nothing that's going to take the world by storm, but it's fine. It's pretty clearly a fantasy book with a woman as the main character, and that's really all that needs to be conveyed. And it no longer looks like she's running around in lingerie.

Don't be like Theresa. Plan ahead.

A lesson I should have learned earlier than I did, was that one image is great, but if you're planning a series, you should probably check that there are a few more. 

In this case, digitalstorm has one other image with this 3D model.

This one is a little harder to work with as a cover image — even ignoring the lingerie, she's obviously looking downward, which means that I'll have to put something else on the cover for her to be looking at. Sounds easy, but once you start messing with covers, you realize how little real estate there is for the image. 

I think I'll have to cut out the background, crop the image and maybe rotate it counterclockwise a bit. It would be easier if she were looking into the sky, because I could put a dragon up there to give her something to look at. If wishes were horses and all that.

The Options aren't Great

The best thing, of course, would be to do my own render of this 3D model in Daz Studio. (Note: this would also solve the problem I'm currently ignoring of what the heck is going on the cover of book three whenever I get around to writing it, ha ha ha.) However, I don't know what model and hair were used, and I can't figure out a way to determine that info.

My second best option would be to contact digitalstorm and see if they would be willing to render another image or just tell me what assets were used in this one, but there's no way to contact the image creator through DepositPhotos or any of the other image sites.

So... my image manipulation skills are going to get a workout this week. This may answer the question of how much fog I can add to a cover before it looks ridiculous. Wish me luck!