I Love this Cover

This was the cover of the SBRPG rulebook, it was a beautiful piece of work. The dice were done in 3d, it took me about 8 hours of work to get the dice high-resolution enough to use for the cover. Even then, the pips had significant faceting that I had to eliminate in post-work. You see, at this time, all we had was a copy of Ray Dream Studio 5 (nowadays they call it Carrara 8 Pro). As you can see from the spine, it was a thick book.

The dice were rendered at full size, something like 8000 pixels across, along with the true-3d gold lettering of the title. You can probably see some of the faceting in the backface pips, but I labored for hours getting rid of those imperfections and making those dice sing. The reflections and light play inside the dice were limited by our software, something I wish we could of made sparkle and refract light all over the place. The dice flying off on the back cover (right) are perfect, dynamic, and express action and fun. I love the reflection in the top black dice, it gives the back cover pop and dynamism.

The cover still stands up well, even to today's standards. Both George and I studied graphic arts with one of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream's original graphic artists, so we kinda have a knack for design and layout. The cover was stark white, leaving the rest up to your imagination. I came up with the red bar and racing stripes, an element that was used on the chapter heads inside.

The contrast between the front cover (dice ordered and ready), and the back (dice in play and in mid-roll) is something that we thought was cool, and captures the ready-set-play nature of the game. It also expresses the action and dynamic nature of the rules very effectively. It is a cover that holds up well, and I am still very proud of this to this day.