After conducting all of my digipak planning including drawings and identifying what images I wanted to use, I began making a quick first initial design on Photoshop. This design had come from my drawings which I had created and was right at the beginning of production.
My first initial attempt of creating my digipak front cover. While creating this work, I started to dislike how it was turning out overall and decided to abandon the work and start again. Although this was initially a draft, I could not envisage of how it will eventually turn out and what I could add to it to further improve it.
However, while quickly creating the photoshop design, I had realised a few things about the work which I was not particularly happy about. Firstly, after placing the image where I had wanted, I began to feel as if this image was not suited to what I wanted to create. This is because the photo had a plain black ground. After editing this image a bit, I felt as if the plain black background was too plain and dull as a finished product. After doing research on a few other digipaks/CD covers, I had noticed that most famous digipaks contain a well angled photograph as the main front cover with text such as the album and artist name on top. Usually, not much editing is needed if the image used is suitable or looks good enough to be the main image on the front cover of the digipak. For example, take Eminem's album cover Recovery into account. All the front cover consists of is one image of the artist with the album name added to it.
Although this album cover does not relate to mine in terms of genre and does not contain the artists name, I liked the simplicity of the cover and showed me how well one image works. This is what in turn made me refer back to my work which is when I decided that creating something which has a plain black ground would be too complicated to edit to make it look appealing to look at.
Another example of how well a single image can be used as the front cover of an album.
Another reason as to why I had ditched the idea was that what I had drew on my design, I did not know how to do on Photoshop. In my design, it contained the same image used in this failed attempt, however, it also had a few artistic lines appearing from behind Poppy (the artist) stretching out across the cover getting wider and fading into the background. After a couple attempts in a previous practice session I did myself, I was unable to achieve the result I wanted.
A drawing of the front cover of my digipak.
My drawing compared to the first attempt of me trying to recreate my design on Photoshop. I did not know how to actually create the lines appearing from behind Poppy on Photoshop and therefore did not know what else I can do.
You can see in the drawing the line effect I wanted to do. After a few attempts on Photoshop, I could not manage to recreate my design and found it difficult to evenly space out each line and not make it look disproportioned. Due to me not being able to recreate my design, this left me with a plain black background which is the first point I mentioned. I could not think of what else I could do with the failed result and had therefore decided it was best for me to abandon the this initial design and start again. This meant I had to start from scratch and think of a completely different design.
"In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?"
In the research and development of our music video we were very inspired by contemporary artists visually, through editing and artistic movement and performance.
Here is a brief video showing the main videos we were influenced by. The projection videos are first shown, whereby I was influenced by the likes of Emily Osment, Imogen Heap and Rihanna. These videos show the way in which different types of projection looks on the artist, and all are related to the genre and the context of the song. Below are a few images taken from our video, whereby we have used projection on to our artist to create abstract art and link to the disjuncture theme of our video. The colours are quite dark, showing the type of artist she is perceived as. The red stands out and suggests danger and abnormality in this video rather than lust or sex.
We were also heavily influenced by other visual aspects of music videos, such as Leona Lewis and Bat For Lashes. We were influenced by the setting as well as make up ideas, whereby I similarly created our own version of this. We wanted to created an animalistic angle to this video, by setting it in the woods, whereby the artist is shot with flowers around her hair and blue artistic tears down her face, contrasting the red dress. This was used to emphasise the disjuncture and almost random, unlikely scenarios in the video.
My Digipak is conventional in the way that it is similar to artists that fall in the same genre of my respected artist, Poppy Power. Through all of my products, we intended to stick closely to the alternative genre of music the artist produces and to convey her like this. In doing so we took a very artistic approach to our music video, whereby it involved woodland scenery to link to the animalistic nature of the lyrics), projecting images onto the artist, as well as wrapping her with fairy lights and applying extravagant makeup. I believe this follows the conventions of the alternative pop/rock artists, as the artist aim to present themselves artistically rather than as an attractive sex symbol, commonly linked to the genre of RnB. Similarly to artists like Ellie Goulding and Florence and The Machine, I created artisitic work whereby I edited my images to create a cold darker theme to the Digipak, thus linking to the theme in the music video.
Here is a video of me describing the videos that inspired our work:
Here is another brief video of me describing my Digipak and Ancillary work. I briefly mention the codes and conventions of a Digipak and Advertisement and how I went about putting these conventions into my own work.
In creating my Digipak there were several codes and conventions that I had to follow, and I became fully aware of these through research and analysing other ancillary products - some that were of a similar genre to my artist and others that were weren't.
Above are ancillary products by myself, Rihanna, Florence and the Machine and Ellie Goulding. I was definitelu able to get a sense of how an Advertisement should look and I think I conveyed this in my work. I used a similar style to Ellie Goulding and Florence and the Machine. I understand that advertisements are most successful if they are kept simple, therefore I chose to minimise my use of text and use numbers like in the advert of Florence and the Machine. I think this makes the date more prominant and lets it and out more. Conventionally, I used a close up of the artist, as well as the same image as my Digipak to link both products and let the audience know what I am promoting. I feel a close up is important as I want to show the artists face on her debut so she is more likely to be recognised and remembered. Similarly to Ellie Goulding, I have used a yellow colour scheme, as I associate the colour with light, as well as a black background to make it stand out against it. I have included a quote at the bottoms, similarly to Ellie Gouldings debut album cover, to promote the artist and suggest how good she is! In addition, I also added the two main singles that are out on this album 'Includes the hit singles' this is to help persuade the audience to buy it, as we are aware that the song the artist is more famous and recognised for is included on the album, which will entice the audience.
Above is the video I created about our use of conventions and how we followed the theories of Andrew Goodwin and Carol Vernallis.
This is the official title of the album cover LIGHTS OUT' the font is very clear yet simple. Which is what I was looking for.
This is the inside panel, first idea was to have a mirrored image of my face but in the end I
didn't think that this look was a great idea, as well as I noticed how odd my ear looks and so I edited it out
to blend in with the darkness of the hair and shadows.
As you can see, the ear has been edited as well as the image on the right has been changed,
the image of the artist on the right is edited to be shaped in the size of the cd so the image is darkened
around the edges so it is circulating the artist.
I darkened the right image and made the circle of the cd disc more noticeable.
This was my first plan of the poster tp have the image that is used on the inside of the album
blended in with the other image to contrast from light to dark.
In the end, with my final advertisement, i decided that the image on the bottom right didn't look profesional and so I deleted it.
First plan of the digipak, as you can see, the left image is different to the drawing that I had
planned to do before, but the image had to be screen grabbed by the video and it didn't have good enough quality.
Before we were allowed to make our official digipak, We had to create a tester digipak using images that our teacher gave us. I found photoshop very frustrating, everything about it infuriated me. Nothing worked how I wanted it to and every time I tried to do one thing, something else that I didn't want to happen, happened. Because of this awful expeireince with photoshop, I'm concerned how I will manage when I'm going to be making my official Digipak for my coursework.
But with a few reassuring lessons and teachings from Micky (The technician) and Nick (Group member) I was very satisfied with my rough digipak and am now very excited to begin on my own digipak for the artist: POPPY POWER- LIGHTS OUT!
I've always had the idea of the name as 'Lights Out' to be a big relation to the image I use in the poster. And So I Used one of the images that Diana Baker took for our artist and so the big image represents 'Lights' and the album cover represents 'Darkness' and so when you put the two images together, it translates to 'LIGHTS OUT'!
Front cover (Above) I want the digipak to be simple and all about the artist. With The audience putting the face tot he name.
The back is to relate the digipak to the music video, having an image from the music video will relate the digipak to the video and so audiences will link the music video tot he artist.
Below are two quick designs I had created on which my digipak will be based on. I had initially annotated the designs, however the A3 sized sheet could not fully fit onto my scanner. The front cover contains the main idea of the colour scheme red, black and white/bright glowing colour. I am unsure whether I will use that specific image of Poppy on the front cover, however, the layout and colour scheme are the same.
Also I may change the design a bit but the final product will look similar to this initial design.
Here is a quick initial design of the inside of the digipak. The first image's background is to extend onto the second panel as it is one image. The final image used may alter. However, the concept of one image being placed across two panels will remain.
Below are the main images I will be using in my digipak and advertisement. I will alter the colour and contrast of some images if I feel they are a bit too saturated or dull.
This will be used as a back-drop and will be faded with another image .
Being used as the back cover of the digipak.
One of the main images being used in the my advertisement. Will change colour and contrast a bit as I feel the colour in this image is a bit washed out.
Being used as the main image on the front cover of my digipak.
Being used as the second image in my advertisement. Will be blended in with the main image.
Will be cropped and shaped to fit across 2 panels on the inside of the digipak.
Here are my finished ancillary products (finally!) I am both relieved and satisfied with my work, I have made a few final changes for the better and below is my advert, Digipak outer panels and inside panels.
