6/11/12- Creating the album cover and booklet

In the lesson when Hannah was editing the music video, Rebecca and myself decided to produce several print work for advertisement and album cover on Adobe Photoshop. We wanted to make the album cover cohesive to the music video, so we took screen shots of different parts of the video, cropped it and added some Photoshop elements. We were strongly against the idea of using the band members on the print work as after researching some metal-core advertisement or album cover, none of them used their image.

                                                           Photoshop



The following images are possibility for the album cover and advertisement.

1. Live footage of the band
2. Rebecca's brother carving on his arm
3. Robynne and James walking away from the camera
4. Lyrics burning on a paper

Before Photoshop
                                                                                             After Photoshop

Before Photoshop                                                                                          
                                                                                                                  After Photoshop


                                                   

                     


Before Photoshop
                                                                                                                        After Photoshop                   














Before Photoshop                                                           After Photoshop

I had to create the live image while Rebecca did the rest. I started off by creating a new document on Photoshop  After I did that, I changed the paper size to International paper, A4 and then I changed the paper from portrait to landscape so that the  band members had a better fit on the page.  I then dragged the image from the desktop on to the document opened on Photoshop.

Creating a new document on Photoshop

I then decided not to crop any parts of the picture because I thought if  I tried to have an equal sharp in all the 4 angles, then I might cut out some of the band members. After we decided what font we should use on the band name, album title and any additional information, I then had to decide what colours will work best on the cover.  We decided to use the same font for the band name on all our covers. And then we could choose what font is most suitable for the rest of the writing on the covers as long as the other group members thinks it works well. The font we decided to use for the band name through out the print work is "Handwriting Dakota".

Choosing font for band name

As a group, we decided what should be on the the covers, From looking at examples of the different metal-core print work, we choose the following;

Additional information to include on print work. 

After we finished some of the print work, Rebecca asked for some feedback from some of our target audience in the sixth form. When asked what cover they will like on our album, most of our audience picked two covers; the one with the lyrics burning up in flame and the "Fuck". We started thinking of ways to use both the images, using one for the front cover of the album and the other for the back cover. Rebecca then came up with an idea of merging both images together to use both for our front cover album. 

Finished front cover

However, because there is swearing on the cover, we don't think it will be suitable for our target audience and we also thought that hypothetically speaking, some retail markets might refuse to sell the CD. We though that the only advantage of using swearing on the front cover is that because it will be controversial, it might gain popularity and so increase the band's audince.  

We also wanted to make a booklet for our album so as to introduce our band the to their audience and to give the target audience a bit more information about the band members. Rebecca created the panes for the booklet. she used the following images. 

Creating the booklet: 

We wanted to create a booklet for the album; that could have information and images of the band members as it is conventional to this genre and will reflect the age group of the target audience. With the help of Hannah and myself, Rebecca started by creating a new document on Photoshop, and then dragged individual images of the band members on to the new opened document.

Creating a new document on Photoshop

Pane1: The first pane is the album cover.  Rebecca created it by using two different images of from our main product. She merged together the image of the lyrics burning, and the image of the word 'Fuck' on the arm.  She did this by adding the image of the arm first before adding the image of the fire on top of it, so that it looks like the arm is on flames. This means that we are not over using on particular picture which could be seen as offensive or controversial, but by using both images, the word on the arm is less controversial, but the cover is more effective as it might draws the audience's attention as they might want to know what is burning up. 

                                                     Merged images of the hand and the fire

Pane 2: This is of the band members standing in the group and individually after their performance. Rebecca created this pane by dragging the pictures into a new document on Photoshop, and then she cropped the edges of each picture to make it fit better on the page. To write on the page, Rebecca had to changed the order of the layers so that the writing overlaps the pictures and stand out.

Changed layer

Blow are the images Rebecca used Pane 2















Remember the Ruined-band members                                                                 
                                                                                                                James Seccombe




















James Artherton                                                                                                       Pro Roy 
















Jake Fox                                                                                                     Ian Gregory

Finished pane 2

 Pane 2: This pane is the lyrics of the song 'Stubborn Memories'. Rebecca rotated the image 90 degrees anti-clockwise and placed it on a 12x12cm Photoshop page; this is almost the size of a CD. she used the free transform tool to stretch the image on the page and then used the Magic wand to delete the 

edges so that it fits better on the page.

Before rotating




















                                                                              
                                                                                                      After rotating



Rebecca then dragged the three images against each other so that it makes the first side of the album booklet. To do this, she simply created another document of photoshop and from the already open document, she dragged first, the album cover to the left side of the page so that when the booklet is folded, it is on top. she then dragged the image of the band members and then she added the image of the lyrics on the right side of the 12x12 paper.

                                                        The first three panes



Rebecca then created the back of the booklet. The forth pane is a black and white image of the fire. The only change Rebecca did to this image was change the original colour to 'grey scale'. She then flatten the image to save it as JPEG.



coloured image












                                                                                              grey scale




Pane 5:  For the fifth and sixth panes are collage images of the band members performing live at the Fleece in Bristol. Rebecca did this by dragging the images onto a new 12x12 page on photoshop. She then cropped the edges of each image so that when put together with other images, it fits well on the page. She used a mixture of coloured and grey scale images, and then flatten the image so as to save it as JPEG.

                                                            pane 5- live images 


Pane 6: She used this page as a thank you page for everyone who was involved in all the stages of the video. We thought it was a good idea to have a thank you page because when researching metal-core albums, a lot of  artist used it and it can be seen as a general convention for all music genre.

                                                        Pane 6- thank you page
 

                                                                       back booklet




Finally, Rebecca created the back cover of the album. We had already decided to use the image of Robynne and James walking away from the camera as it was one of the popular images with our target audience.

                                                                Album cover