GIMP Version: 2.8.14
Operating System: Linux
OS Version: 16.04LTS
GIMP Experience: Basic Level

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Hey GIMPers. I want the dogs to appear as if they are falling through mid air. I did a light motion blur and you can see the lines, but still, I feel I can make the falling seem better. I do have GMIC if there's anything in there that might help. Any suggestions? Thanks.

how about this more exagerated motion blur.

I think you need an upper layer of the dogs being all sharp. The layer below that can then have the motion blur. The look of being frozen up in mid air is more appealing imho. Maybe a bit of smearing on the upper edges of the dogs on the sharp layer to make it look smoother.

I would make the dogs sharp and cartoony, because the butterfly net looks bit like vector/cartoon style.
Don't like how the motion blur looks, either nothing or similar to this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fast ... _lines.png

Great, Graechan. I will try it! Thanks!

Thanks T. I'll give it a try! Thank you!

Thanks Vincent! I'll experiment with that and see how it looks. Appreciate it!

Thanks Nidhogg. With nothing at all the dogs kind of looked like clip art just stuck in there. But I'll see what it looks like with the wiki example lines. (You can see that my lines were trying to effectuate that. Granted, pretty pathetically. lol) Thanks!

Okay, I tried everybody's suggestions. The wind and blurring made the cover look busy somehow. Regarding that, Vincent's suggestion of the two layers helped a lot. But I thought the best look was Nidhogg's suggestion of nothing. I even removed one of the dogs to make for a little more open space. I think the net makes it look like the dogs are falling, but I'd be open to any suggestions to make for a slight sense of falling. Or do you think it conveys that slight sense of falling as is? I'll attach the file if you want to experiment. Thank you!

In my opinion the problem is that the dogs are not falling at all. They are cut out from a standing or sitting position and now hover in mid air.
Thats why it doesnt look convincing.
The only thing that tells us they are falling is the net.

As long as you cant somehow get better drawn falling dogs, i would go with Nidhogg's idea of using cartoon lines.

@Wallace: great job !!! You found the perfect flying dogs !

What i dont like about the design:

1) everything in the composition is fighting with each other for attention.

The dogs are very "busy" because there is so much movement.
There is a very bright yellow title on a very saturated red background and a very saturated blue author's name.

There is not enough hierachy and too much saturation in the colours.
Yes, the size of the text is telling us where to look first, but the colours are telling us something else.

2) maybe the yellow text would benefit from using different weights. A heavy one for the title, and a bold or normal one for the subtext.

3) the real dogs clash with the drawn net

4) the dropshadows: always an efficient way to get more contrast, but i dont think they belong there.
Even if this was photographed on a red backdrop, there wouldnt be shadows like this.

Notice how the black and white dog works best. The others are too light in colour to provide the necessary contrast.

Thanks very much, Konstantin. This is an excellent critique, but I don't think I'm going to be able to use the falling dogs.

Wallace, this is brilliant! It blew me away! Thanks so much! But I don't think I can use it. This is going to be a book cover and I don't know if I'll be able to purchase and get permission to use the falling dogs images. And people are fanatical about dogs, and the photographer who did the photos is getting grief for it (in the form of terrible reviews). I personally have already encountered a fair amount of resistance in just having written the book. (People don't like the idea that dogs are in jeopardy in the book.) I can live with my image with just the static dogs, but maybe I could get some help with one more try at the motion lines? Mine (as in the attached) are absolutely terrible. And they take up too much space and don't look realistic at all.

And believe me I feel terrible about not using yours! It's so good! Thanks again. Gregg

P.S. I've attached the .xcf again.

These angry reviews are absolutely hilarious !
Probably all written by crazy "catladies" (and gentlemen ?)

But its good marketing research for free !

Im not entirely sure what this book is all about.
So its about women who rescue dogs ? What does it have to do with feminism ?

Apparently what is needed are some cute puppy eyes and happy dogs that appeal to emotional animal lovers!

Maybe cartoon dogs, instead of photographs of dogs, and hands catching them instead of a net, would be less offensive.

Oh, man, animal lovers get so crazy. You have to be so careful. I love Wallace's falling dogs. They're perfect. But the backlash will be there.

My fictional novel is a humorous thriller. A zany over-the-top romp. That's why I liked the comic book feel of the cover. I need to let readers know the book's a comedy. There's a lot of violence in the book, but it's like Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" kind of violence. In other words, realistic but the reader (hopefully) knows it's also cartoonish. Here's the blurb:

Some say she’s a sociopath. Some say she hates men. Some say she just loves animals.

Lainey Tripper is a whiskey-drinking hard-living animal rescue feminist. But she has just this one little problem: she can’t seem to stop killing men. Not all men are so bad, and not a few of them are attracted to her, but when Lainey leaves a rescue, dead men are invariably left in her wake.

Lainey heads FART (Feminist Animal Rescue Team), a group of women dedicated to stopping the villainous Donovan from oppressing women and animals. But now Donovan, intent on world domination, has taken his evil to a new level. He’s systematically stealing Chicago’s dogs to sell them to a foreign power.

In Lainey’s enthusiasm to stop Donovan, she again kills a lot of men. Her fellow FARTers plead with her to moderate her man-killing tendencies, but Lainey’s pretty sure any guy she kills deserves it, and besides, she must do whatever it takes to save Chicago’s dogs.

Will Lainey stop Donovan in time? And when she’s done, will any men be left alive?

Thanks 2-ton. I'll check into the cartoon dogs idea. But I don't think the net is offensive. It's that the dogs are actually falling.