Now that I have my new laptop, I will be able to really get started on everything involved in this class.
Today, I decided on my last two novels:

I know that yesterday I had said that I wanted to do something with dragons, but.... I changed my mind. I'll go with the well known, but not often illustrated gryphon. I've only read a portion of this book but I see this as a chance to put a lot of action into a work. I'd also get to work on textures thanks to the feathers.

I've picked the epic space opera The Dreaming Void to be my space piece. Of course, I could also take it towards a fantasy theme because of some parts of the story. I'd like to incorporate them both if I can. People with psyhic powers and spaceships and aliens and black holes and... you get the picture.
Tomorrow will be spent doing roughs. I'd like to have at least 5 roughs per novel to show to the teacher on our first meeting Thursday. Good luck to me.

With the beginning of Summer I classes, I'm starting this blog as a documentation of my special problems class. Within this blog, I will show everything that happens day to day in the creation of five book covers in five weeks. This will include the research, sketches and final products. These final products will involve two traditional works, with the rest being digital.

I've decided that I'm going to focus on Sci-fi and Fantasy novels, keeping with those I've read. Mostly. So far, I have three definitly:

Book 1: One of my favorite novels of all time and the main reason I really wanted to do this special problems class. I've always felt that this cover didn't match the amazing epic feeling that I got from it. I want to display the character in a different environment with more about his amazing powers.

Book 2: As a big Halo nerd, I just had to do a Halo novel. From the beginning, I've always felt that this one is the weakest. It's so low detailed and looks like it has a blur or smear filter on it. I want to do something a bit more epic.

Book 3: This one was recommended by my brother who is a big Xanth fan. I read it years ago, but couldn't remember if the cover matched the novel or not. He tells me it doesn't. I might go high-fantasy with this one.

And that's it so far. I still have two others to pick. I might go with something from the Pern series so that I can render a dragon. For the last, I want to have some hard core Sci-Fi. Space and spaceships.
Back to researching...