Conventions of Album Covers

Drawings of subject matter

For this task I had to draw out ideas that I could possibly use on my album cover. For inspiration, I looked at Hybrid Theory, by Linkin Park. This album cover has a semantic field of military and also conflict, so I decided to base my drawings on military and music. An example of this is the soldier playing the guitar and the random band sitting in an army jeep.

Digipak scamps

More of my own scamps

My own scamps

Scamps

For this task, I had to find a load of album covers and then draw each one with a bit of detail. This was so that I could get an idea of how different album covers look in comparison to other album covers from different genres. I drew each one as if they were actually meant to be miniture versions of the chosen album covers. This was so I could fit on more detail. After drawing all twelve scamps, I decided to make them into a gif by using gif maker.me.  

Drawings linked to scamps

Emulation 2

This is my second emulation. I decided to get rid of the atomically structure and replace it with four faded polygons. Instead of taking a photo of the sunny sky, I decided to take a picture of the grey and stormy sky. This was because I wanted to make it look more dark and gloomy in comparison to Thousand Foot Krutch's Oxygen:Inhale album cover.



Here is the original photo that I took. I took this in the beginning of a storm, which was fortunate because this was the kind of weather that I needed.

To make the polygons, I simply clicked on the polygon icon, located near the bottom of the tool bar.

I then proceeded to make a black polygon in the centre of the page.

written study references

Copy 2

For my second copy, I decided to copy the front cover of Oxygen:Inhale, by Thousand Foot Krutch.

To start off, I took a picture of the sky. I tried my best to get a photo of the sky with clouds on each side of the image. Unfortunately I couldn't get the perfect image, so I had to settle with the one below.

To fix this problem, I simply used the pen tool to go around the cloud. As a result, I then had a second cloud that I was able to flip over and reposition on to the left side of the image.  I then changed the brightness to give the image a softer and more relaxed tone.

This is the result of changing the brightness:

When making the element symbol, I simply placed a white circle in the middle of the page and then used the elliptical marquee tool to cut a whole in the middle.

Here is the finished copy:

Emulation 1

For this task, I had to make an album cover by using the same style as Skillets awake album cover, but I had to use my own creative skills and ideas as well as using some of the same features as Skillet.

My main idea was to once again wrap Lukes face in toilet paper, but this time only have his mouth showing and nothing else.
Below are some practise shots:

 After the first few photos, I decided to draw a pair of eyes on the toilet paper. This was because I wanted to experiment by making it look slightly creepier and unique.

I then chose a photo and decided to crop and edit the lighting in photoshop .

Here is the finished piece:

Copy 1

For this task, I took the album cover for Skillet's Awake album and decided to copy it. Just like the real thing, I decided to take a photo instead of drawing or vectoring it. 

This is the original album cover.

This is my copy. Luke volunteered to be the lead singer wrapped in bandages, but we didn't have any bandages. After some planning, we decided to wrap Luke's face in toilet paper for a substitute for bandages. 

Similar artefacts pins (from Pinterest)

The reason why I pinned all of these album covers is because I want to study all of them and try and get as many ideas as I can. Hopefully, I can use those ideas for my final piece.

Top trumps

These top trumps are giving information on two bands. The information was found by researching on the bands websites.

My own top trump:

Mind map

This mind map shows a collection of different album covers that I found on the internet. The reason why I included these album covers in the mind map is because I wanted to show the difference between the genres listed below, but also the similarities.

Brief timeline of nu metal albums from 1994 to 2000

Created with Padlet