Angels and Demons: Wings.

For the angels part of my 'Angels and Demons' studio brief, I wanted to create any

final image: front and back cover.

Here is my final album cover, both front and back. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out, I liked the composition which was mostly taken from my initial sketches. However, some of the text on the back-cover can be difficult to read and whilst getting feedback, this was pointed out to me. If I am to improve on the covers it will be to make the font easier to read. 

The font I decided to go with for my album cover was 'spaceman' which I had downloaded from dafont.com under the subtitle: 'sci-fi'. I really like this font because I think it ties in with a lot of Pendulum's other album covers. I personally like the reflection of Pendulum's logo in the eyes of on the front, and a few other people agreed with me, some, however, said that the reflections could have perhaps been a little brighter which would have made it more visible and perhaps more eye-catching, but after trying both, I preferred the more subtle effect. 

I think the back-cover could have used more beams as the centre is a little more sparse than the outer edges, but I do quite like how the overall effect came out. I like that I managed to stick to the 'color' theme that I had originally decided on.  

front cover


The front covers beams were originally designed on paper and then scanned in and traced over the beams on photoshop. I used paper first because I wanted to see what the design would look like initially. I like the how bottom layer of black turned out with the scratched-kind of effect. This wasn't intentional to start with. I was originally going to have the background completely black, but I preferred this effect rather than the full black because it looks sort of rugged.

back cover


On  the back cover, I used the same template for the front cover, but added a few extra beams where the eyes would have been on the front. I'm pleased with how it turned out, but I think if I were to improve, I would have added more beams, in the top left hand corner. This was the cover where a few people said that they couldn't read the text, or rather the track-list I think, looking back, that I agree with them and I might come back to it and back the glow behind the text brighter, therefore making the text easier to see. 

line drawing.


This is the original image I took digitally, I created a line drawing of this image and printed it out to then sketch/colour in with a traditional media. 


Above, is the coloured in version of my line drawing, here I used chalk to 'colour in' or rather, roughly sketch over the line drawing, once this was done, I then scanned it into photoshop and put it over the top of the original digital image. This is the completed image below. 


The line drawing was layered over the top using the effect 'liner light' and 69% opacity. 


fonts.

For the album cover, I wanted a font that went along with the other Pendulum album covers they had, when looking on photoshop, none of the fonts on there didn't look similar enough. So, I search Dafont.com and went under the heading 'Sci-fi' and looked through the list these are the few I am considering using, I think I will most likely use 'spaceman'. 

rotating and resizing images.


Rotating an image on photoshop is easy, first you have to click on the 'Image' toolbar, then scroll down and hover over 'Image Rotation', then it's just a case of clicking which way you want to rotate the image.


When resizing an image, you have to go, again into the 'Image' toolbar, but this time scroll and click on 'Image Size...' Once this has been clicked, a tool bar will appear and you simply have to put in the measurements you want the image to resize to and then click 'ok'.

workflow.

jpeg.


Here, the .jpeg file is closed, and therefore a smaller file size (3.1MB), but when the .jpeg file is open like the one below, it's a large file size (25.7MB)

making a faux julian opie image.

This is an image of David Roundtree, created by Julian Opie, I'm going to create my own faux Julian Opie image using photoshop and one of my own image.
This is the original image I used to create my faux Julian Opie image.

Using the pen tool to create anchor points and paths, I drew around the image to create an out line, once this outline was finished, I right-clicked the path and selected 'stroke path', this made the path into a black outline, show below.
 


Below is the finished outline, without colour or the orignal image underneath.


To add colour, the 'paintbucket' tool was used, and the right colours selected, for the hair, clothes and skin.

This is my complete faux Julian Opie image with colour.

props, lighting, make up and models for shoot.

Since I've decided to mainly focus and expand with a pair of eyes on the front cover, creating my own cover for the album 'hold your colour' but also using elements such as the eye from the orignal cover, no props will need to be used in my shoot and no real extravagant light will be needed as I only plan to use the eyes in the cover. I will be mainly using avalible light only, no flash guns or studio lighting will be needed because of only wanting to capture the eyes.

I will be using a female model, and just capturing the face or possibly not even the whole face and just close ups of the eyes using different angles to see which angle will look best, this may be best on a diagonal similar to a lot of the other album covers which then lead your eye toward the text.

Not a lot of make up will be used on the model because I am only capturing the eyes and nothing else, these eyes can also be edited to how I want on photoshop, I may take some of the eyes with make up and some without to see which will get the effect I want without any aid of photoshop.

more sketches and final sketch.

intial sketches.

cd covers.

Here, I researched some album cover to see what makes a good album cover. The similarites, differences and what I personally found worked on an album cover. Typing in 'the greatest album covers' into google lead me to this site: http://rateyourmusic.com/list/fedderedder/rolling_stones_100_greatest_album_covers this site had a list of 100 iconic album covers which I looked through.






The first thing I noticed about all of theses covers was that they were all of a simple composition, there was nothing to busy about the composition which meant there was nothing to distract from the album name and artist (if it was on the cover).

This simple composition is something to think about when designing my own cover, simple compositions are easier to remember than more complicated ones because there is less to look at, I think this works with an album cover because then instead of picking up on all the small details the words on the cover are then clearly displayed and nothing else distracts you from them.

Colour seems to be an important factor in creating an album cover contrasting colours between the text and actual image have been used for example, on The Clash, London Calling, album cover pink and green have been used to contrast with the black and white of the image underneath, and on Depeche Mode, A Broken Frame, red and yellow have been used to contrast with the grey of the sky.

However on the other album cover the magority of the titles, artist names and any other text seems to be black or white which contrasts with almost every other colour on the album, or blends with the colours on the album to make the text seem part of the image.

Differences between the albums I found were little because of how simple the compositions are, the covers also seem to have similar patterns in the cover that lead you to either the main subject--the majority of which are people, or they lead your eyes diagonally across the cover and toward the text.

the impact of digital photography.

The rise of computers and technology has made things worlds easier, that including that of photography. This means a lot of people with little knowledge of shutter speeds and f-stops can take instant photographs and depending on the camera, professional-looking photographs. With "Automatic" modes on a camera it's a lot easier to record images which can be both a good, and bad thing.

Most people seem to take advantage of images because of the how easy it is to simply take them, most phones now have some sort of camera and a small digital compact camera is easier to take around than a bulky SLR. Images can now be deleted off of a memory card leaving more room for even more images. Even better than that is once you have a camera and memory card, it's doesn't cost to take images at all, only for printing which unlike with film, you don't have to buy the paper, film or chemicals, you can simply take the memory card to a shop and an hour or so later you'll have an photograph in you hands.

However, with being able to do this so casually, taking photographs can be taken for granted now that anyone can do it, those trying to make it professionally then have work harder and creatively to get into the business and stand out from those who just ''point-and-shoot''. Though with all the camera's settings, though their is an ''auto'' mode, if you don't know how a digital camera works, you may not be able to do create effects in the camera and therefore will have to learn editing skills.

Learning photoshop, thanks to tutorials, can be very easy and though a lot of people will have the skills, to use photoshop, if you use it creatively it can be very effective which is another plus for digital technology. For example these images below created by Platinum FMD and Gale Franey, using both a camera and creative software (photoshop, paint shop pro, etc) would never have been possible with a film camera, so this software, though easily distrubited and even easier to use once learnt can be used creatively and helpfully to produce high quality images, this type of software can then be of a good use to a photographer with good skills and high creativty. 

by Platinum FMD.

by Gale Franey.

Unfortunately, though digital photography has all theses pluses, it also means that film photography and darkroom printing is being pushed aside to make room for the 'digital age'. Film photography and darkroom printing have now become specility skills instead of normal practice which though cost effective for photographers, means that a whole age of photography is being less and less used. 

Photoshop and other programs of the like, have special effects to replicate those of darkroom printing, but unfortunately most of the hardwork in getting the exposure right all manually is being lost and not to mention devloping the film and images yourself.

Because of photoshop and digital photography a lot of people take for granted how hard photographers used to work to create clear images using film because they haven't shot and processed their own film and images

lorretta lux.