Final Project – Vinyl Album Cover Design

The Golden Age

The song I’ve decided to do is The Golden Age by The Asteroids Galaxy Tour. It was a song from a Heineken commercial back in 2011.

20161017-1In the song lyrics, there were mentions about “the Broadway stage” and “a trip back in time”, which became inspirations for the rough ideas I came up with. Initially, I wanted to work more on the idea of time travelling (the left sketch), but I wasn’t able to think up of what to do within the clock face. Hence, the idea was scrapped and I worked on my second idea (the right sketch), which is picture of a theatre, inspired from “the Broadway stage”.

broadway-theatreThis is the reference image I used for my design. The theatre has two storeys, and both storeys have audience seats. The theme I was going for is the luxe feel from the ’30s (which is ‘The Golden Age’ the song is referring to). With Cheryl’s help on my mind map, I’ve decided to use velvet cloth for the seats to give a different texture to the cover.

20161024-1I first drew up the base design. The most difficult part of the drawing is that of the theatre seats with one point perspective. I was going to do the front part of the cover mainly with paper cutting.

20161024-2I transferred the base design onto a tracing paper so that I could ‘copy and paste’ the lines to the different sheets of coloured paper I was going to use for the paper cutting, so as to ensure that the end result would be aligned properly when I pasted the different layers together. This tracing paper is for the black paper.

20161024-3This other tracing paper is for the other coloured papers. Thank goodness Cheryl suggested to me to just draw individual seats for the first few rows, if not the paper cutting part (to cut out the individual seats) would be extremely tedious to do.

20161107-1The final front cover has a total of 5 layers to it. The bottommost layer is a whole 12″ by 12″ piece of red velvet cloth. The next layer is the black paper, whereby the seats in the theatre are cut out so as to show the velvet which represents the seats. The third layer is the light orange coloured paper which represents the walls in the theatre.

The second topmost layer contains the pillars and balconies. I’ve done this layer with acrylic paint on white paper. The base colour is a very pale yellow grey. I’ve added some vertical grey lines on the pillars so that the pillars aren’t smooth (which was a little boring.) The pink draperies on the balconies were done with thick layers of paint to give a more textured look, reminiscent of the folds and creases when cloth is being tied up. The pillars and draperies are accentuated with a little bit of gold paint to give the subtle luxe feel.

The topmost layer of paper is the wood stage flooring. This time round, I tried watercolour paint on white paper to have a more blended look with various shaded of brown. The name of the song and artist were written with black marker onto this layer (the fonts done with powerpoint and ‘copy pasting’ it with the help of tracing paper), but it didn’t pop up as hoped, thus I added some gold linings on the song name to make them pop a little more.

The microphone in the middle was done using metal wires twisted into shape and glued together. Normal craft glue wasn’t strong enough to stick metal together, so I ended up resorting to using shoe gum to stick them.

The overall temperature of the front cover is on the warmer side, which is inspired from the yellow tint in vintage photos.

20161107-2The back cover has a door in the centre to signify opening a door to a new world, or according to the lyrics of the song – “a trip back in time”. It is drawn according to the design of the door that appeared in the beginning of the Heineken commercial (where The Golden Age was used as the theme song). The door is done in watercolour pencils and water to blend the colours. For the stained glass, I used more vibrant colours so that the overall picture does not look too depressing.

Initially, I planned to use the leftover red velvet cloth for the red carpet, but thought it might be an overkill, therefore I swapped to using a cut out red coloured paper. The grey bricks in the background were added in at the last minute because just the door itself looked rather awkward and lonely.

In this final project, I tried to bring the essence of the lyrics into my design, using objects that can be linked to the song. The making of the cover was also very tedious due to the layers of paper cutting. Although the final product did not end up exactly as I pictured in my mind (I’m a little disappointed, to be honest), it had been a very good experience – from the brainstorming of ideas to the touching up of the final piece before submission.

Exercise 4: Mood Painting

20161003-1I’ve first attempted the landscape picture. It is done in watercolour. However, the colours weren’t blended well as I used too little water and too much paint at once, especially for the sky part. The colour mixing part wasn’t easy, as I couldn’t get the right shade of yellow for the golden fields part and ended up being more of a dull orange when the painting dried.

20161003-2During the second class, I did the breakfast photo. This time round I tried acrylic paint. It is extremely hard to recreate colours of food, as too bold a colour makes the food looks fake, and too dull makes it look unappetizing. I tried to make the eggs fluffy by piling different shades of yellow orange on top of each other. The beans were especially hard due to the shine and gloss of the sauce that I wasn’t able to reflect in my painting. There wasn’t time during class for me to do the background, so I ended up just painting it light blue to not clash with colours in the plate.

I had lots of fun mixing colours in these exercises, despite being quite challenging as more often than not, the colour that came out when I mixed them wasn’t what I was expecting.

Exercise 3: Color & Mood

20160919-1What do you like about this image?

I like the analogous colours of the nature in this picture – the green tree, golden field and the blue sky with wisps of white clouds.

What kind of mood and emotions does it evoke?

The picture gives a refreshing feel since it is a photo of the nature. It also evokes a sense of loneliness as there is only one single tree in that vast plain.

20160919-2What do you like about this image?

I like how the picture looks very appetizing as the food have a nice shine to them, especially the eggs that looks really fluffy.

What kind of mood and emotions does it evoke?

The picture uplifts the mood. It evokes the satisfaction from being full after having a hearty meal.

20160919-3What do you like about this image?

I like the earthy colours used in this picture of a living room showroom. It makes the house look welcoming.

What kind of mood and emotions does it evoke?

The picture gives a sense of coziness, without looking cramped despite the number of furnishings in it.

Exercise 2: Abstract Compositions (Black & White)

This exercise involved the cutting of black paper and pasting them on white paper, or vice versa, to create a storyboard. We also had to incorporate principles of design (balance, emphasis etc.) into our work.

The story I have chosen to work on is Alice in Wonderland.20160829-10

Exercise 1: Simplification of Forms & Textures

Using only dots, lines and shapes to recreate the pictures was not easy, especially for the texture part. Drawing with such restrictions was a first time for me, and I’ve learnt how images can be created with just very basic elements. The process of drawing these images ended up to be very rewarding.

Part 1: Identification of Lines in Environment20160808-10

Part 2: Simplification of Forms20160808-12

Part 3: Simplification of Textures20160808-14

Art Final Piece

I have a fear of animals in general, particularly dogs. This may be due to a traumatic experience I had as a child. I am afraid of any forms of contact with them and have this unrealistic (quite impossible as well) fear of their teeth biting me to death.

In my sketches, I first explored this by depicting a ferocious dog from my perspective. I am trying to hide the dog from my sight with my hand due to my fear. Next, I played with scale quite a bit, making the shadow of a dog look like a monster that is much bigger than I am (the silhouette of a girl).

In my final piece, I played with scale and shadows quite a bit. There is a hand shadow puppet of a dog’s head made from my hand against a light source. And at the other side of the picture, there is me trying to back away from a dog.

I do understand that my fear is irrational, and is nothing more than me thinking that the dog is baring his fangs at me when in truth the dog is just sitting there without posing any threat to me. I also enlarged the hand shadow puppet a lot to signify how small and afraid I felt in front of the dog, due to my fear of it. A spotlight is hitting on the picture plane to create enlarged and elongated shadows to give the sense of dread I feel whenever I am close to a dog.

Fear is made up by oneself; as represented by my hands creating a grotesque shadow from a harmless dog, therefore overcoming it has to start from oneself.20151118 - (1) 20151118 - (2) 20151118 - (3)