Album 2
This is my second album in my collection for my capstone. This one was the closest that I got to actually designing a cover art image should I ever actually become a musician down the road in life.
The Base Picture
For this picture I wore an all black shirt and aviator sunglasses and sat posed on a stool. The portrait looking style was achieved with a zoom lens on my DSLR camera, and also with a bit of tricky lighting. On the left side of the image was actually a mirror that needed to be covered up so as to not reflect light. The black blanket also acted as a light blocker and helped create a much darker unlit side. The light coming in on the right side of the image was actually someone kneeling below me shining a lamp upwards.
The Guitar
I used my black Ibanez guitar as the main prop/object. The stickers were one of the main thing I wanted to have showing through in the final composition. The background I had propped it up against is the same hallway I had my picture taken in. It worked really well having such a brighter background compared to the guitar because it meant much less work in order to isolate the shape and create a layer mask.
Design Sketch
Turning the Image Black and White
Making the image black and white helped remove some of the distracting coloration, though I felt that the initial layer effect that I chose for this image made the picture look too smooth. However I was satisfied with the monochromatic color scheme, which I decided to keep. The next step would be to add some the guitars over the image.
Playing with guitar placement and font
I wanted to include a sort of edgy and hard rock style font, something you'd see printed on posters in an underground music venue. The font I ended up using is called Troublemaker DEMO. I really liked how my name and the skeleton key name turned out against the background. With the guitars I was mostly trying to see just what sort of placement I wanted to settle on. For the layer effect I used the "divide" style, along with a posterize layer above in order to add a rugged yet sharp look.
Finishing Touches
I decided on placing only a single guitar on my left shoulder, and moving my name towards the upper left side of the screen. The guitar placement itself almost appears like it is lighting up that side of my face, a fun little method of playing into the lighting set up. Same as my other posters, I ended up cropping the image to a more squarish shape. The result is a dramatic looking piece of art that could possibly pass as the next coming up in an indie rock concert.
Inspirations
The Bob Dylan poster was the main inspiration for the centered portrait style that I wanted to shoot for. I thought he looked so cool just standing there dramatically. He also was the inspiration for me to wear sunglasses in the picture as well.
The font used in the Black Sabbath poster was my main influence for what I wanted my font to look like. Their poster and style also made me realize that I wanted the final image to be completely in grayscale, as opposed to having splashes of color here and there.