Photoshop: Your product and reflection

Our task was to construct an album artwork of a fictional artist or band. Firstly, I had to decide on what time of band or artist I was doing, their genre and image. To do this I chose a random word and wrote down a few ideas that linked to the word. I chose the word ‘smoke’ from this point I began thinking of things such as fire and destruction, but the most poignant idea was ‘drugs’ from this I began thinking of drugs and cigarettes and other inhalant substances and their link to music. 

Video of mind map and planning

This led me to think of 1960’s psychedelic rock music (such as Jefferson Airplane) which was an emergent genre of music in the 1960’s fuelled by sexual revolutions and drugs. The idea of drugs also lead me to think of Alice in Wonderland and the speculations that the story describes the effects of drugs. This then connected to one of Jefferson Airplane’s most famous songs ‘White Rabbit’ which discussed the theme of drugs in the story of Alice in Wonderland. 

Then I went on to research the story of Alice in Wonderland I looked at the colour schemes prominent in the book, animated film and live action film and decided on the colour palette combining the three versions.  I found that blues, pinks, purples and green were the main colours to focus on. I typed into google ‘Alice in Wonderland smoke’  

The images that came up were of the caterpillar in the animated Disney film smoking a hookah pipe, from then on I decided to follow these images as my main inspiration. 

Artist conception of the caterpillar

Classic illustration from the novel

After looking through original illustrations from the book and the film versions, I thought that the caterpillar in the live-action version was the most striking to use. I really liked the hues of blue throughout and the realistic yet comical appeal of a caterpillar smoking a hookah pipe. 

I went onto Photoshop and selected a blank piece of paper and edited the size so that it was perfect square, the same shape and size as a CD cover. 

I moved the image in and then I cropped it so that it would fit perfectly within the blank page. 

The image of the caterpillar was now the perfect size. I decided that based on my theme of ‘smoke’ and the smoke coming out of the caterpillars mouth that I would use smoke to write the name of the album. Using a white brush I dotted the letters of the title ‘Puff’ (because you puff out smoke) this is because I didn’t want the white brush lines to be prominent. 

Then using a smudge tool, I followed the smoke out of the caterpillars mouth and then smudged the white dots.

 This made it appear as if the smoke out of the caterpillar mouth spelled out the title of the album. I then used the text tool to write the band name. I chose ‘TRiPSY’ because when people do drugs it is said that they are ‘tripping’. I sampled some blue off the caterpillar using the ‘eyedropper’ tool so that the blue used for the text was cohesive with the blue on the caterpillar.

I then used the smudge tool again to slightly smudge the letters on the band name. 

Lastly, to emphasise the theme of smoke I took a big white brush tool and dotted across the bottom of the CD cover.

 I then used the smudge tool to create waves and smoke effects. 

My final product drew on a classic character from ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and re-vitalised it to fit with the bands star image of being unique and psychedelic. By looking at the cover the band would appear organic according to Negus’s theory. This is because the band uses ambiguous imagery to present themselves and do not depend on the band members or any person to sell the product on the cover. Overall, the imagery, colours and symbolism conveys the bands rock and alternative genre which I believe make it a successful cover.