#musicresponse

Final Image Grid & Album Art

This is my chosen final design for the album art for All Things by The Cinematic Orchestra.  I found it really hard to choose between my design as I think they all represented the main themes I was trying to communicate.  

Concept 3: Final Design 

For Concept 3, I was keen to go back to an experiment I did previously with Mica Powder.  I was initially disappointed with how this turned out and wanted to try again.  

The first time I experimented with the process, the colours of the powder didn't come through as vibrant as I had hoped.  I decided to try again using the powder on a black background and it worked a lot better.  I think the dark background made a difference to how the powders photographed.

Another important theme that came through from the track was the idea of movement/motion - as I listened I thought about vibrations and soundwaves. After researching motion through art, I came across work by Yee Wong and this inspired me to try and create motion through the powders.

I decided to use bright colours to link to the colours of a butterflies wings again linking back to my initial theme of transformation. 

Again I took this into Photoshop and played around with colour and different compositions.  I also tried a wave filter - I think this looks like acrylic paint and although it retains motion, visually I wanted the powder to be present.

Concept 2: Final Design

For Concept 2, I took inspiration from the chrysalis research I had done previously.  To take this further I looked at my initial mood board and thumbnails, looking particularly at the X-ray images of the chrysalis.

During my development process I decided to use string to represent the fibres of the chrysalis.

I took these images into Snapseed to play around with colour and different filters.  I wanted to make the images appear more graphic and I think Snapseed was useful in achieving this.

From Snapseed I took my images into Photoshop where I decided to try and create some colour versions.  For this concept I didn't want the colours to be bright so I deliberately chose more muted earthy tones. The main reason for this was to reflect the early chrysalis process and mimic the lack of colour in this.  

Concept 4: Final Design

Refine & Reflect

For Concept 4 I decided to develop another theme taken from my initial mood board which was the butterfly.  I was keen to include this as one of my final album covers as it represented part of the chrysalis cycle.

The first experiment I tried was Riso printing and this transformed my original black and white image. (Image 1 pink & blue).

I felt this was a little too pretty and wasn't representing my track in the way I wanted it to.  I then took this into photoshop to play around with colour and composition.

I changed the colour of the background to black and used the colour & saturation tool to transform the butterfly.  I think the colour change has given my image more impact and the darker colours are more representative of my chosen track.  I also duplicated the main butterfly image to create two butterflies, I think this creates a sense of movement.

Initially I mocked up a version of the album art shown in the the top image with the two butterflies, I also added a filter but I wasn't completely happy with the end result.  I went back to the drawing board and decided to duplicate and add another butterfly.  Again I played around with the colour and i think the three butterflies compliment each other tonally.

As a final album cover, I think this represents the process and development of my theme, however, I was keen to use one of my earlier butterfly prints.  Although I really like this album cover, I don't feel like it represented the delicacy  of the chrysalis process in the way I had hoped.

I decided to mockup another few versions of my album cover using the acrylic paint prints I created:

I really loved the quality of the butterfly version above and decided to reduce the size slightly.  The below image is my final mocked up album cover.

Concept 1: Final Design 

For my first concept, I selected some artwork I had previously experimented with to represent my idea around the chrysalis process.

I think the acrylic paint worked really well to create these weird, strange blobs and very much reminded me of how I felt when listening to All Things.

I decided to bring these into Photoshop to develop further.

Once in Photoshop, I played around with colour and saturation and I like how the top two versions turned out.  I love the brightness of these and how the colour added impact to the rippling effect of the paint.  In reflection, I feel these look a little too digitized and take away from the impact of the original artwork.  In the bottom two versions, I tried to mute the colours to see how this would look but I think these look a little flat.

Next I decided to play around with composition.  First I reduced the size of the image and rotated and then I decided to increase the size of the image to see how this would look as a cover.  I prefer the larger versions of this artwork, I feel the top two options look like they are just floating around.  

I really enjoyed this process developing my artwork using the colour, scale and rotation options in Photoshop.  I finally decided on the above image as my final cover, I love the detail I have been able to achieve by increasing the size of my artwork.  I also decided to stick with the original colour as I feel this is the most striking version and it represents the chrysalis really effectively.  

Experiment & Reflect

Similar to my experimentation to recreate the detail of the chrysalis X-ray, I wanted to look at the butterfly in more detail.

I found the below image of a butterfly egg and it reminded my of my initial thoughts about the track. There’s something really weird and other worldly about how this looks at a microscopic level.

Image via Pinterest

To recreate this I used bubble wrap and acrylic paint.

I covered the bubbles with the black paint and then pressed onto card.

I then added some colour, keeping to the theme of black and pink that I had used in previous experiments.

I love how this turned out but it lacked texture. I decided to take some photos of the actual bubble wrap to bring in some texture.

I also tried smaller bubble wrap and a corn on the cob to recreate the cells of the egg. I think the smaller bubble wrap looks ok but the larger version has much more impact. The corn on the cob didn’t work at all.

Experiment & Reflect

Again trying to create motion I scanned and printed some dot/line/shape work that I had done previously.  I cut the designs into strips and then mixed them by overlaying in different directions creating a collage.