First Draft CD Cover

Here is the first draft of the front cover for my digipak, I think that the illustation reflects the video's drawn style, though it is more realistic than in the video. I thought that I would include flowers as they also are featured in the video and work well with the older look of the whole Hewitson River style. I drew over a picture of flowers and then got a picture of a man sitting on a chair, except I made it so he was sitting on the flowers, then drew over that so he would look like Hewitson River, I also changed his facial expression as he was much too happy compared to Hewitson.

I made him sitting on flowers because I think that conveys the fact that he is self-centered, the flowers form a kind of throne for him to sit on; he sits in a casual way though, as if he doesn't care. He is also central to the image and the main focus. I wrote out Hewitson's name on the cover by hand so it looked like he had written it because then it would look like an signature on a painting, conveying how highly he thinks of his work and himself.

Cover Analyisis - Beck

Beck does not feature on the front cover of his album Guero, which is entirely illustrated in an abstract, and kind of grotesque, pen and ink style which harkens back to an old style of almost diagrammatic illustration. I like the way that the simplistic nature of the the drawing could usually be associated with a more serious medium, though the composition of the illustrated images creates an abstract and fairly humorous image as a whole. I think that using hand-drawn illustration on the artwork would work well because it would then tie in with the music video where is a lot of hand-drawn rotoscoping, and it would also relate to the 'vintage' feel of the video.

The typography seems quite tongue-in-cheek as it uses a very extravagant and old font for Beck and the album's name. This could imply some form of humorous self-importance, as there is a certain prestige attached to similar font styles. The placing of the font is very obnoxious as it covers a good part of the artwork on a big black sticker, which one could say is very ignorant, like defacing a painting. It seems like the man of the left is drawn to look embarrassed at this. I think that this element could apply well to Hewitson River as he is supposed to be quite self-centred and egotistical in this way.

Futher Mock-Up Experimenting

My original idea was to incorporate our duplicate idea into our digipack, and as I am still poorly and unable to get to Jordan to take photos, I am experimenting using some stills from the video.

I have blended two of the video stills together and I love the effect this creates. I adjusted the lighting a little, but the original lighting is perfect because of the contrast of Jordan against the dark sky. It connotes his importance and star persona. I adjusted the contrast slightly, to make him stand out a little more, and lowered the saturation to age it slightly. His facial expressions are moody and typical of one side of Hewitson's character. As Hewitson seems to have a split personality within our video, I thought that an effective idea would be to duplicate and blend a photo like this, with Jordan portraying a moody character in one photo, and a happier character in another. When/If I get the chance to photograph Jordan, this is something i'd be interested in trying out

I added a grain over the top of the photo, to add to the vintage and aged feel that is part of the brand we are creating. I love this effect as it is subtle but effective

 I think that using a simple font like Times New Roman is classic and simple, not taking the attention away from Hewitson. However it may look too simplistic and boring. I like the positioning and size of 'HEWITSON RIVER' at the top but I think it takes all the attention away from the album title.

Here I have centred Hewitson's name and made it bigger, and filled the empty space below with the album name. Although it is bigger than Hewitson's name, the opacity is lower and blends more with the background. This style of album cover is typical of The Smiths, our main inspiration

 To add texture to the picture, I cut out the tree texture from my previous experimenting, and cut it onto the top of the page, to make it look old and worn, like an old page. I smudged the edges slightly to reduce the harshness of contrast between the two foreground colours

I brightened the areas of the tree texture and added the text back on, and I like this effect because although simple, it is more visually interesting and reminds me of old film or old paper.

Colour & typography

Here i have experimented with the lightness of the background, I think this looks a lot better as it does not take attention away from the information and cover. I then added a review/rating from the very reputable NME. I think the review makes it look more professional and will entice the audience as they will (hopefully) know and trust them. I then changed "including the hit single" to "featuring" this is more minimal and lines up with the single name which i think looks more polished.

here i have adjusted the hue to a red/purple colour and made the background lighter, i like this as it is more subtle than the one above however it is not as visually interesting. I prefer the green saturated background, as this makes connotations to nature. As the video is set outside i think this is relevant and ties in with the grave yard and field scenes.

adjusting colour

Here i used white to fill the parchment which leave the texture of the paper like image, however takes away the sepia tone. I then edited the photo in the background adjusting the hue to create red tones. I like this as it contrasts slightly with the album cover but is still in keeping with the theme. It also relates to the subtle colour used on the inner panels of the digipak taken from a still i got, from the tea party.

Here i used white to fill the parchment which leave the texture of the paper like image, however takes away the sepia tone. I then edited the photo in the background adjusting saturation making it higher. My initial plan was to desaturate the image, but this would have made it look as if it had used a greyscale. I did not want a greyscale look as this blended in with the cover, and i wanted it to stand out. I like the unusual use of colour in the background as it looks mysterious yet magical which relates to christmas but also creates irony with the grave yard scene. Because of the bright colours i don't think it would be appropriate, as duller colours make more relevant connotations.

Here i have combined the two techniques however i adjusted the lightness which i think works well! my favourite technique is the second one, however it may look better slightly lighter but not as light as this print as the typography does not show up as well. I think the pink colour connotations are too feminine, whereas we want to portray something with less emotion. As girls tend to be stereotypically loving this will portray the wrong image, as it is one of the connotations of the colour.

I could see my ad being used somewhere like this. there are lots of other music related flyers so people, most likely students, would know to come and look there to check out event. the only problem would be other advertisements being put over the top.

Mock-Ups

I planned to take photos of Jordan for my ancillary mock-up today at the end of school, however since tuesday I have been unwell and haven't been in to school to see him. This sets me back a lot, as I won't be able to take the photos until tomorrow, and then I will only have two days to put my ideas together. However i'm sure this is do-able and in the mean time, I have been experimenting with stills from the video.
I have had to use print screens from the HD setting on youtube and the images are still bad quality and not the right sizes for me to use.

I edited this still from the video, which is from my favourite scene and I like it because it's visually appealing and addresses the tea party, nature & performance elements in the video all at once.

 Here I have experimented with the positioning of the album title. I turned the opacity down so that it would fit with the dark and low constrasted image of the CD cover. I like it most as one line rather than two, because it looks simple and less cluttered. I don't think that positioning it on the left hand side works because it makes the picture look too busy as it clashes a little bit with the fairy lights, and makes the right hand side look too empty. It works a lot better on the right hand side because it fills the empty space and looks good against the texture of the tree.

Here I added vignetting but as the image is already dark, it is very subtle and almost doesn't make a difference. I think that the title would have to be positioned over the vignetting for this to work properly so that it doesn't over-lay it and set it back into the photo.

The only thing I don't like about this image, is that it doesn't portray Hewitson's persona at all, so I would hestitate in using it as a photo for the CD cover, and prehaps would work better for a picture on another panel.

There are few stills that I think would work as portraying Hewitson correctly, so tomorrow, when I am hopefully back in school, I will take some appropriate photos of Jordan and also ask Jack to send me some good quality skills from his laptop, and then experiment some more.

Filters

Today I looked at the different filters I could use for my ancillary tasks. 

I like this one because it looks almost 'sketchy', which I think will work well with the rotoscoping. I like how it's a mixture of sketch and the real thing, which I think looks effective.

I like the colour saturation in this photo, and how the flower is the main focus point.

In our video we used a scrabble board in order to display 'big mouth strikes again' lyrics, therefor I used a font which relates to scrabble to experiment with. I think it looks effective, and I will look at using this in my ancillary task.