I enjoyed the absolute hell out of Borderlands right up until that last expansion released and I lost any and all desire to play the game. But that doesn't change how much love I have for the time when I had a lot of love for playing Borderlands and I could probably be coerced into firing up the game again if Katrina ever had the urge.

So, how to approach a custom cover for this one? One of the things which draws me to games such as this is the idea of claiming a character class as your own. It's especially true of Borderlands, where it just seems less fun when there's a second version of you running around and it doesn't really help the team all that much (unless it's Lillith). So I wanted to reflect that identity, which really left me with no choice other than to just make four covers:



The rear of each of the four covers features the vault symbol. If there is demand and time, I've considered the prospect of making a four-piece set which, when on a shelf together, would create the Borderlands title. I just can't see a reason to do it for myself.

Anyway, feel free to download the full-sized versions below. These are sized for standard DVD cases, as I intend to pool them all together in a uniform display. Again, enough demand and I can toss together ones more appropriate for blu-ray cases.

Borderlands "Hunter" cover
Borderlands "Siren" cover
Borderlands "Soldier" cover
Borderlands "Berserker" cover

Been some time since I got around to doing a custom game cover. When I first started making these, Deadly Premonition was always at the top of my list. I just couldn't settle on what I wanted to attempt.

My first idea was to depict the victim Anna on her tree. A few early efforts wound up fairly ugly and I started looking for other ideas. The design I almost wound up going with would have consisted of Agent Morgan's open case notes.

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been playing through the game again and I resolved to get this cover done so I could stop thinking about it. And then it just came together. I stopped thinking about all of the ancillary aspects of Deadly Premonition, all of the plot elements both on and below the surface, and remembered that at the core it's a story about a young, dead girl on a tree.

And Coffee.



Download the full sized version

I took a little bit of time this weekend to whip up more game covers. Since I recently finished Uncharted 2: Among Thieves on Backlog (my live streaming show where I play through the unfinished games in my collection; Weeknights, 10pm Pacific on Destructoid's Justin.tv channel), I thought it might be worth the effort. But, just with the Dead Space covers, I really didn't want to make a cover solely for a sequel so I would have to make a cover for Drake's Fortune as well.

The initial idea for the Among Thieves cover was to reference the three-bladed dagger that's at the center of the struggle for much of the game, and I figured I would probably put the image as though it were half buried in snow on the back panel of the page. Which is all well and good for that game, but its predecessor's iconic item is a worn journal. I toyed for a bit with trying to get the book to look visually interesting in a two-tone color scheme but it just wasn't working. I later tried to represent the statue from El Dorado in three colors and it was an ugly, muddled mess.



So, the treasure was out of the question for Drake's Fortune. Another idea considered was a dotted line and a big 'X' on a map backdrop. I liked this because the map would add texture to the design but I haven't figured out how to make the dotted line work in Photoshop and abandoned that idea pretty quickly as well.

Ultimately, I decided to set a theme of discovery with the two covers. Abandoning objects altogether so that I could have consistency, I focused on the people they were centered upon. So we have Francis Drake in the corner of Drake's Fortune and Ponce De Leon on the Among Thieves (except it's Marco Polo in Uncharted 2; whoops! Old images replaced with new hotness). This was way easier to accomplish than anything else since I could use woodcuts of the figures and they'd look great against the map backdrops.



And then there's this thing that I toyed with briefly before abandoning it. I wouldn't show it at all but I wanted to illustrate how out of fashion woodcuts must have become by the 1920's.

Now I make these covers to conform to a DVD case standard because I want them to be consistent on my shelves. Since people have asked and seeing as the Uncharted series is PS3-exclusive and all, I made versions of the first two Uncharted covers which should fit PS3 cases. Download the covers below:

Drake's Fortune: DVD / PS3
Among Thieves: DVD / PS3

I posted a pair of covers that I made for BioShock and Bayonetta on Friday. People seemed to like them, so I spent a little bit of time this weekend cooking up a couple more.

Reading through the comments this weekend, someone suggested that I should make covers for new games. That got me to thinking and I came up with an idea for what I might do with a Dead Space 2 cover. But I already knew that I was going to make a Dead Space cover at some point and it seemed a bit silly to be making the second one first. To that end, this cover was made:



It's hard to do Dead Space without overdoing it, I think. I considered going with the plasma cutter instead of Isaac's helmet for the back but I couldn't get it to look the way I wanted it to and settled on this instead. And because it's a pretty barren design, I opted to go with some of the game's text in a pattern on the background, though it's almost imperceptible.

This freed me up to do the Dead Space 2 cover:



I like the colors on this one because their tones remind me of vintage books.

The template I use to make these can be downloaded from this link. It's derived from a template downloaded long ago and I have since lost the original zip file, but I did include the folder of fonts used by the template, so you'll want to install those if you don't have them already. As you'll see, it's already configured with guides and such and has a ton of logos already bundled in to make things easier.

I was going through some files, doing a little maintenance, and came across a few custom covers I made a few months ago. Over time, I'll probably get around to making more of these (there's an unfinished Earth Defense Force 2017 and I'd like a Deadly Premonition one very much) but I can't devote much effort towards the project.

Eventually, I want to have an entire shelf of my favorite games in generations 5-7 (and probably 8), all in DVD cases with similar covers. Because I am a dork.



If anybody wants the template that I used to make these, that can probably be arranged.

After a year away from what's probably the biggest gathering of Dtoiders in the US, I'm happy to say that I'll be attending PAX Prime this year. I didn't join in on the fun in 2009 because getting across the country for a weekend of drinking seemed like a bad idea at the time. But something has changed that makes my trip a little bit easier.

Which brings me to the second reason for this post: I'm pulling up stakes. Next month, I'll be making the move from Phoenix, Arizona to Portland, Oregon.

Now, we know nobody in the area and there are only two of us to unload the truck. So, I'm thinking, maybe some of the wonderful people in the Destructoid community would like to come by and lend a hand. More like hoping, really.

If you don't have plans already for August 15th, maybe you would like to join us for some beer, pizza and maybe some vidja gamez once we get a TV set up? Oh, and unloading all sorts of crap from the back of a truck and putting it into a tiny apartment. Say something in the comments here and I'll be in touch.