Custom Blu Ray Covers Guide and Discussion

If you would like me to do a cover that I haven't got listed don't hesitate to ask as I am more than happy to make a cover for a show I don't persoanlly own.
Ooooh, you're taking requests - I think you've already covered (excuse the punšŸ¤¦ā€ā™‚ļø) most favourites I wanted covers of but now I'll have to go back to my collection to see if any others would benefit from your handiwork!

edit: by the way, do watch Lain - excellent show and I've seen it appear in mvm's weekly offers a few times
 
Ooooh, you're taking requests - I think you've already covered (excuse the punšŸ¤¦ā€ā™‚ļø) most favourites I wanted covers of but now I'll have to go back to my collection to see if any others would benefit from your handiwork!

edit: by the way, do watch Lain - excellent show and I've seen it appear in mvm's weekly offers a few times
Yeah, I have been taking cover requests since the first post but only one person asked for one so far. So if you do find one from your collection let me know.

I also want to watch Lain but its time and there is so many other shows I want to watch as well.
 
Yeah, I have been taking cover requests since the first post but only one person asked for one so far. So if you do find one from your collection let me know.

I also want to watch Lain but its time and there is so many other shows I want to watch as well.
šŸ‘

I sure know what you mean about time - just not enough hours in the dayšŸ˜ž
 
Stumbled across your thread whilst googling ā€œEvangelion dvd movie insertsā€, made an account to thank you for making all the Evangelion remake movie covers, I absolutely hate that none of them match and now I can correct them and they will look amazing together šŸ˜ thank you again for your hard work.
This is one of the nicest comments I have ever received, the fact you went out of your way to make an account to thank me means a lot. I am glad you like them, maybe one day I will get around to doing the series and two movies.
 
Nadesico The Movie The Prince of Darkness is finished, no clean cover due to lack of suitable official images. Just finding the regular cover art in a non stretched state or just having its normal colours was almost impossible. I managed to rip this image from some streaming site that had it as a background and even then the image is cropped at the top but its the best I can do. Older, lesser known Anime always have a lack of images, which makes my job slightly harder.

Anyways I am going to start putting the covers in these messages and their respective sections so there are multiple ways to find them. I will be moving onto Shigurui: Death Frenzy unless someone wants me to do a cover for another show.

Nadesico: The Movie - The Prince of Darkness Standard Cover

Martian Successor Nadesico The Prince of Darkness.png

Nadesico: The Movie - The Prince of Darkness No "Full Length Feature"
Martian Successor Nadesico The Prince of Darkness No Full Length Feature.png

Nadesico: The Movie - The Prince of Darkness No Age Rating Logo

Martian Successor Nadesico The Prince of Darkness No Age Rating Logo.png
 
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I am very thankful for you taking the time to make these covers. It's been a very real inspiration and help in attempting to create blu-ray covers of my own using GIMP. Presently I have not printed any of these drafts yet and cannot confirm the sizes are 100% accurate. But I am slowly figuring out the various steps and layouts that work okay. But as I have no experience with graphic design I am struggling with font choices or text size. I'm also uncertain how to make textures at the moment but hopefully that is something I can develop.

Below are some draft designs and if anyone has any advice or feedback would be appreciated.

This was intended to be closer to the volumes of the manga using a colour pages and illustrations made for the original DVD release in Japan. Really not happy with how the text looks yet and I will need a better solution for how to display the technical info for series.
Screenshot 2024-09-15 at 19.05.13.png



This one is coming along okay. It's the spine that needs correcting the most and it's missing some key information but luckily Trigun's striking red titles gives me something to build on. I want to make a second version that uses alternate art form the US release that better reflects the look of the movie but so far I think this is alright.
Screenshot 2024-09-15 at 17.52.50.png
 
I am very thankful for you taking the time to make these covers. It's been a very real inspiration and help in attempting to create blu-ray covers of my own using GIMP. Presently I have not printed any of these drafts yet and cannot confirm the sizes are 100% accurate. But I am slowly figuring out the various steps and layouts that work okay. But as I have no experience with graphic design I am struggling with font choices or text size. I'm also uncertain how to make textures at the moment but hopefully that is something I can develop.

Below are some draft designs and if anyone has any advice or feedback would be appreciated.

This was intended to be closer to the volumes of the manga using a colour pages and illustrations made for the original DVD release in Japan. Really not happy with how the text looks yet and I will need a better solution for how to display the technical info for series.
View attachment 35893



This one is coming along okay. It's the spine that needs correcting the most and it's missing some key information but luckily Trigun's striking red titles gives me something to build on. I want to make a second version that uses alternate art form the US release that better reflects the look of the movie but so far I think this is alright.
View attachment 35894
It's wonderful to hear that my guide has been helpful in helping you create your own Blu Ray covers! I have personally never used GIMP so I am unfamiliar with software but it looks like you have made some great progress so far. I am not sure if this will be helpful to you but the canvas size I use to make my covers is 1987px by 1096 px and the DPI is 300. For non logo fonts I often use "HelvLight" . It's a similar font to what Funimation/Crunchyroll uses on their covers and is a pretty nice looking standard text for blurbs and such.

Alternatively if you want to find a specific font that they used on the official cover, the best option is to search up what they used. 8 out 10 times someone has already asked on a forum like DaFont and someone has answered which is very helpful. If not then I sometimes run through all of the fonts I have and match it up to another font the best I can. Other times the fonts that were officially used are required to be paid for, that is really up to you if you want to pay for a specific font. If you need fonts, DaFont has hundreds of free fonts you can download and there are plenty of tutorials on how to do that.

In terms of text size, depending on what the text is I don't have a set number I use. If it's for a blurb I simply change the size based on the area I need to fill up. The less open area the better but remember not to have your design too cluttered.

After looking at your designs I think they are great, especially if you have no experience with graphic design. They look better than some of my covers, I would say you definitely have an eye for good graphic design and something you should continue to do. I might even have to ask for that background you used on Trigun, for when I get around to do my own cover (if time permits).

In terms of feedback I think your spines are currently your weakest area. While the actual layout is fine, the problem I see is that the Manga logo and Trigun logo are too close to the edges of the spine. The reason that this is an issue is because when you print them off, the images of the logos will slightly leak over onto the back and front of the cover when the cover is bent into the Blu Ray case, more so if it's a 4 disc Viva case. This leads to the edges of the logo image weirdly hanging over by only a couple of annoying pixels, MVM has this issue with their massive BBFC logos and it personally drives me nuts. Making them slightly smaller will avoid this and will sacrifice very little for a much cleaner look.

The second bit of feedback concerning the spine is moving the Blu Ray logo and BBFC logo further down. This will give you a lot more space to work with on the spine, something you might need for potentially long logos, always try to maximise the space you have. Unless you have something planned for that area.

The third bit of feedback I have would be making some minor adjustments to the text boxes on the back. For Soul Eater I would suggest making the orange text box the same width as the text above it so it flows down more naturally. For Trigun I would suggest trying to make the back blurb box more centred with the images off to the right. As I can see a bigger gap at the top compared to the smaller one at the bottom. Symmetry is always a plus.

Concerning your technical text on your Soul Eater cover I would try and replicate what you have done on your Trigun cover as it looks a lot nicer and more in theme with the cover.

Hopefully this information and feedback is useful as what you have so far looks really good and with some minor adjustments it would make them even better. If you need any PNGs like distributor logos, BBFC logos or Blu Ray logos let me know as I am more than happy to provide them. If you make any changes to these cover or make anymore covers, I hope you post them as I would love to see what else you make. I could even add them to the main post if you want.

Now I need to get back to making my own covers, I wish I wasn't so busy these days as I never seem to find the time to finish the one I am currently working on. But hopfully I will finally have it finished by the end of the month.
 
Long time, no cover. I finally finished Shigurui: Death Frenzy which took forever because I never found the time to actually finish it but here we are. Anyways no clean cover again because of the lack of images, I just struggled getting regular images for the series as there is a real lack of useable images in the first place. I even had to remake the logo entirely from scratch because there was no PNG I could just use.

Despite all of that and the time it took to make it, I am really happy with how the cover turned out in the end. Gundam Wing will be next and then after that I think I am going to go back and remaster all of my old covers because some are crap like the Konosuba ones.

Shigurui: Death Frenzy Standard Cover

Shigurui Death Frenzy.png

Shigurui: Death Frenzy No Complete Series

Shigurui Death Frenzy No Complete Series.png

Shigurui: Death Frenzy No Age Rating Logo

Shigurui Death Frenzy No Age Rating Logo.png
 
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Thank you very much @N-11 for the help. The recommendations about fonts, sizing and layouts have been a big help. HelvLight is a very good default font for information. Luckily we have been using the same dimensions despite my template being a larger size so the testing print on normal A4 paper went smoothly. Incidentally my way of presenting Technical Information is mostly based on MVMā€™s releases and Eureka Videoā€™s Masters of Cinema range.

I would like to ask about company logos and barcodes. DaFont has some fonts for barcodes but do you have any advice on how to set them up? I'm also trying to find company logos for distributors and production studios but I would like to ask how you would lay those out. Because I'm struggling to make them look good.
 

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I would like to ask about company logos and barcodes. DaFont has some fonts for barcodes but do you have any advice on how to set them up? I'm also trying to find company logos for distributors and production studios but I would like to ask how you would lay those out. Because I'm struggling to make them look good.
Glad I have been able to help, for the barcode font I just use Helvlight. I am not quite sure what you mean by "any advice on how to set them up?" Do you mean how would you install a font off of DaFont?

Concerning the layout of company logos, for the Trigun logos, I would suggest these different designs that I came up with. The Madhouse logo is pretty tricky because of how long it is and Madhouse has only ever 2 logos for the entire existence which is rather unusual. Both of them are long as well which gives you little room to move it around unlike Mangs or Funimation's logos.
Testing Images.JPG

For the Bones, Anime Ltd and Funimation logos, could you post the whole cover with the logos on because I need to see how that one fits in with the rest of the cover. Currently there's not enough context around those logos for me to go off. Also here is a Anime Limited logo PNG thats using a similar blue and doesn't have any of the white around it.
Anime Limited Logo Blue.png
 
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