[Just for fun entry] Murder on the Orient Express

[ChickPea]

For a while, I've wanted to make a map showing the route of the Orient Express, complete with art deco ornaments and a total 'Great Gatsby' vibe. Unfortunately I never got round to it... (I'm sure y'all can relate!) So when Bogie posted this challenge, I thought maybe I could do Murder on the Orient Express instead. Not quite the same, but it scratches an itch somewhat. I'm not supposed to take part in these challenges any more, but Bogie has kindly agreed to let me participate (thank you, Bogie!) though I'll obviously not be in the poll (so I'm not using the Latest WIP tag).

A lot of the covers for this book show a steam train of some sort, so I decided to go with that and thought "Hey wouldn't it be fun if I put a map on the front of the steam train?!" IDK it seemed like a good idea at the time! My map's a bit of a cop-out at the moment, since it's basically a vector Europe map downloaded for the web. However, I'm going to add a second map in the space on the left, showing a carriage plan from the book. The text on the left hand page is copied from Amazon.

I'm going with the spirit of the challenges here, in that you should try new things. This is all done in Inkscape apart from the noise layer that I added in Gimp at the end. I've been trying Inkscape's mesh gradient tool to do highlights on the snow. It's not great and I need to practice more (like, a lot more!) with this tool. It's still a relatively new feature in Inkscape and I avoided for a while because it crashed non-stop in the developer version, however it seems a lot more stable now.

Anyway, this is where I'm at. It's not the mappiest of book covers. I did intend to make the map more prominent, but I kept adding things and it got smaller and smaller.... I'm not completely convinced about the icons either. I might ditch them. Not sure yet.

[tilt]

Looks great ChickPea, you've really hit the era graphic wise - looking forward to seeing it progress

[Mouse]

I agree - looking good - better than you seem to think it does

[Greg]

ChickPea!!! What are you doing?! You can't enter this!!!

Hehe, great to see you back in the Lite Challenges though, especially with this always train map. That's such a cool idea!

[Falconius]

Ok, that is kinda brilliant.

[Bogie]

Great bookcover CP Thanks for sharing!!

[ChickPea]

Thanks so much for the comments, guys. Much appreciated. I'm very far from being a good illustrator and had to do a lot of googling to figure out what the front of a steam train looked like. And yes, this did include pics of Thomas the Tank Engine. DON'T JUDGE ME!!

ChickPea!!! What are you doing?! You can't enter this!!!

Hehe I sneaked in when no-one was looking! There's actually been a few Lite challenges that I'd have liked to enter since I got kicked out, but I don't want to push my luck.... Thank you Bogie for consistently running interesting challenges!

[Domino44]

Very nice design! I can see that it could be tough not to be able to join in on interesting challenges. I'm happy you shared this with us in any case! This is also making me want to design a side and back to my entry.

[ChickPea]

Thanks, Domino. I hope you do create a spine & back page for your book, cos it's looking fab and I'd like to see more.

I've made a train carriage plan with names from the book & added these to my cover. Don't think my layout is quite authentic but it's close enough. I've never really made any sort of layout plan like this before & wasn't quite sure what to add to it. I had a lot more detail originally (like a fancypants patterned carpet) but it turned into a blurry mess when I exported, so I toned it all down and just went with the essentials. I think I'm about done unless I spot a glaring booboo.

[Mouse]

All the culprits in one big nest, with the inspector set right in the middle of them all

Brilliant ideas, ChickPea - well drawn