Here is our first draft of the front cover of the CD. As you can see we have added the background - a photo taken from the hockey pitch of the goal and trees and field in the distance, the main photo of Abi in her first costume - pink top and blue headband. With 3 of the girls in the background with different coloured headbands. We obviously wanted Abi (acting as Kate Miller Heidke) to be the biggest part of the CD and because many of the cd's we looked at had only the artists face on the front cover (Lady Gaga, La Roux) , we decided to use the same idea and aspect. As we were new to the programmes we used, Adobe photoshop and Illustrator we did not know the wide variety of filters we could use on the pictures. Therefore we did not know how to get the effect that we wanted - bright and quirky to match the mood of the song and the artist. So instead we just faded the background and blurred the 3 girls to add the effect that there were on the pitch.We choose the font as shown earlier in the blog out of a number of choices and decided that it would work best - furthermore we decided the blue for the time being matched the CD cover because it was the same as her head band and stripes.
However once we learnt how to photoshop and learnt all the different tools that could be used - we made BIG changes to the front cover.
Here is our Final Version.
We began by deciding that the background was not working, and was too dull and did'nt show any real colour. On Adobe Photoshop we filtered the background to get the cartoon effect you can see, we then increased the brightness to it to make sure the colours were much more vivid. Aswell as adding colour to the background we then felt that Abi herself was slightly dull, so we added a line of light from the top left corner diagonally to the bottom right hand corner, this made sure that her hair and face had much more colour to them. Furthermore we made sure that the 3 girls were not as obvious as in the draft and faded and blurred them more into the background. Finally we changed the font hugely adding a drop shadow and completley changing the colour. We felt that the blue was not working and added to the dullness seen in the first draft, therefore we choose a yellowy orange add to the bright effect and match the secondary outfit used by abi seen in the inside cover. We feel that the front cover works very well and creates the themes that we wanted, it is bright and has a sketched style background therefore shows the quirky side of Kate, but the photo of Abi shows the more serious side to other songs on the album.
The Back Cover
The image you see below is not the very first draft but the second draft. The first draft had no effect on the background and looked much duller. Furthermore the font had no colour to it or shadow to it - looking very plain and normal (not the effect we wanted). Obviously the song list is a vital part of the back cover because it lets the buyer know what they are getting. Therefore the backcover has to look good and display the artists style. We feel that we did not do this in this draft and so had to re-do it and make some changes - especially to the font. We also needed to add key information and a barcode on at the bottom of the cover,
As you can see the changes we made are not as obvious as the changes on the front cover. However we did make some very important changes that effect the back cover. For example the font has been tweeked - Different shades of oranges are ised and the drop shadpw has been added. We also made the sketchy effect more obvious on the background and added a light from the top right corner - using soft light. We decided to make the back cover overall a bit darker than the front. Furthermore a barcode has been added and on the final version, information will be added about the record label, producers etc.The Inside Cover
Here is the final version for the inside cover of our digi pack. While researching many digi packs from popular artists we discovered that it was very common and also popular to have the inside cover both panels. So we decided to follow this convention and display many images of Abi in different poses across the hockey pitch where we filmed a large part of our video. We feel that this effect works very well and each image displays the style of our video and also Kate Miller Heidke. To create this effect we used both Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. We began the process by taking a picture of the background that we decided to use, the picture we took works very well because it covers a large amount of the hockey pitch, the goal and the autumn trees that is also seen on the front cover. We then kept the camera in the exact same position and took many pictures of Abi around the pitch in different poses, close up and far away from the camera. Once the pictures were taken we uploaded the background on to Photoshop and then cut out and cropped the pictures of Abi and imported them on to the background. Because we had never used photoshop before this took a while to get used to but once we worked out exactly what to do it became second nature, this process also showed us how important the layers were on photoshop. Once all the photo's were on the main background we made sure it actually looked like each figure was on the pitch by smoothing around the edges and adding shadows. Finally we added some lighting to the background and our final image was created.
As a final touch to the inside cover we followed the convention of many digipacks and added extra information about the singer, produces, artwork etc in the bottom right panel. We did contemplate whether to create a booklet but thought it was pointless because no other extra information needed to be added.
Digi pack completley finished - We were very pleased with the final version of the digi pack and feel that it looks like a real album. I believe that the inside cover works very well and the effectts that we found out while using photoshop also work very well on the front and back cover. The final version certainly displays the style we were after and displays the theme that is displayed in the music video and also Kate Miller Heidke's other videos.
No comments:
Post a Comment