The back of the cover

After studying some other games' cover art i made my own art for the back of the cover.

To make the metallic looking borders i first made a square with the rectangular marquee tool then filled this square with a varied gradient to make a metallic look. I added some nodes to the gradient on the gradient tool and set them to a variety of greys, whites and blacks to make a shiny metallic look. I then selected the all the pixels on that layer by CTRL + Clicking on the layer's thumbnail then transforming the selection, reducing the scale by holding ALT + Shift then re-sizing it down to the size of the inside of the border. I then used the polygonal lasso tool to make the patterns on the corners by holding ALT then drawing the pattern while holding Shift to keep the lines at 45 degree angles. I then added bevel effects to it in the effects options and set the technique to Chisel Hard to make it look like metal, the depth to 184% and the size to 2px. I then set the shading angle to -37 degrees and the altitude to 37 degrees. I ticked anti aliased to increase the quality of the shading and then set the highlight and shadow modes to normal because they weren't showing up properly. I also set the opacity to 100% to make the shading sharper. Finally i added white radial gradients make light flares to make the metal look shiny.

After making the borders i then got 2 screens shots of a similar game and then re-sized and masked them into the borders. One of the screenshots i took myself in-game and the other one i got from this site:
http://86bb71d19d3bcb79effc-d9e6924a0395cb1b5b9f03b7640d26eb.r91.cf1.rackcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/supreme-commander-forged-alliance-screenshot-big.jpg

I then added a blue tint using the hue and saturation adjustment layers then setting them to only affect the layer below them, setting them to colourize and then playing with the sliders till i got a result i was happy with.
I then added blue radial gradients to the sides of the screenshot borders to make it look like its a hologram or is being lit and then set them to overlay. To add to the holographic/digital look I added blue glowing lines by getting a guide, setting the brush to about 3px then clicking on one point of the guide, holding shift, then clicking on another point further down. I then duplicated this line further down the image by selecting them, holding alt, then dragging it down a few pixels then duplicating those two lines and repeating this until i had enough lines to cover the size of the screenshot. I then added blue glow effects to the lines in the effects options then set the blend mode to Vivid light to make the glow more colourful and the size to 5px.

To make the text box in the middle i made a rounded square vector shape then selected the path and applied a blue stroke to the outside of the selection of about 8-10px then applied a blue glow of 27px to the layer. Then gave it a black background with the rectangular marquee tool and wrote the text with the text tool then applied glow the text of 9px then duplicated the main body of the text, rasterized the duplicate, then masked out most of the words except a few of them. I then set opacity to 46% to make the text have a backdrop in some areas to enhance the holographic look.  I then duplicated the 'THIS IS THE LAST WAR' then applied a wind effect from the filter menu. I set it to blast and then also applied a wave effect and played around with the settings so the text looked distorted then set the opacity of this layer to 46%. I then duplicated the main body and rasterized it and hid the original. I selected parts of it with the rectangular marquee tool and moved them along by about 2px and then converted some text into binary, made a new text layer with the binary on it, applied the same glow effects as the previous text to it, reduced the opacity to 18% and then placed the layer behind the other text.

Finally i tried to create a rubber texture similar to the on below but more of a silicone material.

I started off with a dark grey/black colour for the ribbing and a lighter grey for the crevices. I created these with the rectangular marquee and filling the selection. I then added some outlines for the edges of the ribbing and made them a lighter grey for the side of the lighting then a darker browner colour for the opposite side. I did this by selecting the ribbing with the magic wand tool then applying stroke to selection. I did this on two layers then removed the the light shaded side on the second one, then applied a black glow of 10px with the spread set at 18% and the blending mode set to normal to make add shading to the crevices. I then went over the ribbing three times with the brush tool set to dissolve with the flow set to 1% to add lots of pixels and then added motion blur of about 53% degrees to it to make fibers  I then added Gaussian blur to help it blend in a bit better then set the opacity to 94%. I then added a faint white radial gradient to each bit of ribbing to emulate light reflecting off of the surface. To do this i made a large radial gradient then flattened it down by transforming it and rotated it till it fit the ribbing. After adding this to all of the ribbing i set the opacity to 6% to make the lighting subtle. I then masked the whole rubber texture to the area i needed it and then added the text.