Album Cover Art
Historia
“I LOVE THE WAY IT LOOKS! YOU HAVE CAPTURED THE VISION PERFECTLY"
TYLER NOWELL, MUSIC ARTIST
Credits
Client: Tyler Nowell
Design and Illustration: Jacki Reed
Software: Photoshop, Illustrator, Jazza Studios brush pack
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Background
I was approached by Tyler Nowell, an upcoming musician looking to release his debut album. With a career in theater and filmography, he had an interest in animated music videos and cartoon-inspired album covers. With the theme of his project in mind, he sketched a quick draft of the album design he had in mind. Through word of mouth, he heard of my expertise in illustration and set up a commission for an illustrated album cover based on this concept.
Objective
Create an illustrated album cover conveying the 5 mental states of the musician using the original concept art provided
Target Demographic
Millennials and Gen Z, pop and R&B fans
Conceptual Development
The commission process for this album project was divided into 3 stages: sketch, linework, and color
Brainstorming stage
Upon receiving the rough concept art, I began the design process by first creating a mood board from images I found on Pinterest and Google. I drew inspiration by dissecting the words that make up each panels’ scene. Words like “float”, “maze”, and “storm” could be interpreted in many ways. I relied on my knowledge of art history to find both traditional and contemporary ways to depict the overall theme and tone.
Client's sketch of the concept
Moodboard I created based on the concept
Sketching stage
During the sketch stage, I created a more refined version of the original concept art based on the inspiration I gathered from my mood board. I made multiple interpretations of the scenes and allowed the client to choose the version they liked best. To assist the client with these decisions, I also supplied my mood board and a pdf document detailing my thought process for each concept. The client was able to easily highlight the ideas and designs they thought best illustrated their creative vision.
Each sketch contains a description of my thought process when coming up with the idea. These were taken from the accompanying document I gave the client.
Character Design: Concepts show a difference in art style, age, and realism. The client decided to go with a mixture of the two highlighted designs.
Love and Neutral Panels
Float Conscious: The original concept has two panels depicting floating. I came up with two ways to depict “floating”. Conscious floating is when the character is aware they are floating. The pose is familiar and the viewer can easily tell the character is floating or flying. It usually looks relaxed.
Float Pause: Float pause is when the character is in a pose that doesn’t easily convey that they are floating. They could be falling, walking, squatting, or sitting in a stiff position. Rather it looks like the character is stuck in time or there’s a glitch in the matrix. Or rather a pause. It looks more like levitation than floating. It usually looks tense.
Sadness Panel
Stormy rain scene: I took inspiration from Woodcut paintings of waves, and stormy ship paintings (in mood board). I would design the waves with this squirrely shape to juxtapose the sharper elements of the boat. The character would have the umbrella open, conveying effort in the face of supposed impossibility.
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Calm rain scene: I based this design on the serene style of Life of Pi. The rain would be coming down from above. I would experiment with putting sky reflections in the water. The character would be laying down on the tarp of the boat, reminiscent of the book cover of Life of Pi. The umbrella will be closed in their hand, conveying that they stopped resisting their unfortunate situation. Depending on what tone you want to convey: resistance or patience?
Anger Panel
Fireball scene: My inspiration was volcanoes and medieval RPGs. I would make the background a dark cave with volcanic cracks on the ground and flames all around. I would have the blue letter blowing towards a fireball. I would use dramatic shadows on the character.
Fire throne scene: I based this concept entirely on the fire throne from Avatar Last Airbender. I would use dramatic shadows similar to that image. The character would be standing and the letter would be floating and disintegrating above the character’s head.
Confusion Panel
Stairs: I used labyrinths and optical illusions as inspiration. I figured creating an illusion conveys that “loss of direction” the original concept describes.
Character pose: These are possible poses you can choose from to depict the stairs panel. The locations can convey different mindsets of the character, as well as different moments in time. For example, sitting on the stairs conveys exhaustion. Being upside down or walking down the stairs from the dead-end shows confusion. Walking up the stairs from the bottom conveys hope and anticipation.
After presenting the possible designs to the client, he chose the best concept for each panel. These sections would later be brought to life in the linework and color stages.
Linework stage
For the linework stage, I created the initial linework in photoshop using multiple layer groups. I then converted the full image to a vector in Illustrator. This allowed me to save higher quality versions of each layer that would later be brought back into photoshop for final coloring.
After bringing the vectorized images into photoshop for coloring, I arranged them into the five-panel layout.
Color stage
I took the most creative liberty during the color stage, relying heavily on my own knowledge of color theory and photoshop blend modes. By placing the color treatment entirely in my hands with no guidance from the client outside of the original drawing, I was able to create a perfect final product, which the client absolutely loved. In fact, no revisions to the color were requested after I sent the first version. The text alignment was adjusted and the product ready to hit the market!
Challenges
The design incorporated five scenes which required me to make five different backgrounds containing the same protagonist character. With my inspirations in mind, I chose to depict each panel, aside from the character, in a unique style including various textures, blending modes, color palettes, and brush treatments.
For example, to best illustrate the overwhelming elements of the emotion, the waves in the “sad” panel are based on the majestic linework commonly found in woodblock prints, while the bubbles in the “love” panel have a soft watercolor treatment to compliment the floaty aesthetic. The fire takes stylistic inspiration from anime depictions and the iridescent texture adds to the dimly lit, isolated tone in the “angry” panel. The visual spacing and optical illusion in the “confusion” panel required a larger, more intricate background. But these choices were necessary to convey the idea of feeling lost and disoriented in a labyrinth of stairs.
Results/Reception
Together with the client, I was able to come up with a design that best illustrates the tone and aesthetic of the album. The album debuted on October 16, 2020 on all music platforms to favorable reviews.
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