Evaluation (3)

Evaluation (2)

Evaluation (1)

Change in approach: Digi-pack

Trainspotting (1996) Directed by Danny Boyle

The inspiration for my digi pack stems from the poster art for the cult classic Trainspotting. The film holds similar ideologies to the ideologies associated to the rock genre. 

Final Digi-Pack: Poster

Final Digi-Pack: Album cover

Construction of Digi-pack: Poster Design

The poster design was quite simple to create as I had already done all of the hard stuff for the front of the album cover. First of all, to achieve the appearance of the poster, I changed the image size so that the width was 12 inches and the length was 16 inches. I then copied and pasted the background in, however since the size of the document had changed this ended up making me have to copy and paste the background in four times and then cropping and editing the size so that the background appeared smooth and cohesive. I then copied and pasted the circle with David in the middle onto the poster document and adjusted the size to make sure it fit and there wasn't too much empty space. Next I uploaded the icons for Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat and adjusted the image size so that they fit onto the document to the size I wanted them to be. After I started creating the typography, using the same from the front album cover 'Renegades, DC' but also adding this time 'Choose Life' as this is a well known phrase from trainspotting so I used this to emphasise the intertextual reference. I then added the words 'new album, out soon' and adjusted the colour and size of all of the typography to replicate the typography in the Trainspotting poster. Then in the bottom right hand corner I added a website link to www.DavidCetin.com as I think that it adds to the professional appearance and is something that is shown in other advertisments for albums. 

Construction of Digi-pack: Disk design

For the disk, I decided to continue the theme once again. The background colour of the disk is orange with the typography "Renegades, DC" in the exact same format as the front cover. I also decided to add the image of the boy spray painting which I took from my music video as I think it links the album to the music video together nicely. For the cover behind the CD I used the clone tool once again to fill in the background with the cream coloured textured background from the Trainspotting poster as I think it helps continue the theme throughout as a random colour would have looked out of place.

Construction of Digi-pack: Back cover

Back cover 

To create the back cover of my digi-pack I used the same techniques from the tutorial as used for the front cover. To save time, I copied and pasted the background onto a new document so I didn't have to do it all over again. On top of this I also copied and pasted the circle onto the new document for the same reason. One of the first steps for the back cover was removing the background from the image, looking back there were quicker ways to do this but as this was one of my first times using Photoshop I used the polygon tool and went around the entire image to detach it from the background. I had to go over this a couple of times to make sure the edges were smooth as the tool I was using made the edges look quite choppy. Next I did the same as the front cover by turning it black and white and adjusting the levels, curves and threshold to get the black and white catoon/sketch appearance. I then selected around the gun to separate the gun from the back of his head as I needed more maneuverability and moved it to another layer, I then adjusted the size of the gun so that it was proportionate and placed it where it looked best. After I had to cut the excess of David from the circle through using then pen tool again and then coloured in both the hand and David to the colour of the circle using the clone stamp tool to replicate the appearance in the Trainspotting poster. The typography for the back cover is the same font as the front cover and the same colour as DC on the front cover. I decided to add in conventional aspects of album covers such as the record lable logo and the bar code to create a more professional appearance.

Construction of Digi-pack: Inside Covers

Lyric page

For the inside covers, I wanted to carry on the theme from the outside covers so that they fitted together more cohesively. Therefore I decided to continue with the orange background, since I had already constructed this background once I just copied and pasted it over to the other document on Photoshop to save time. When forming the speech bubble, I went on custom shapes and scrolled through to find a speech bubble that I thought was most appropriate and fitted best with my background. In doing this, I couldn't find one that had the tail going in the right direction so I chose one with smaller bubbles and then selected the bubbles and cut and pasted them onto a different layer so that I could change the size and adjust the direction so that it appeared as if he was spray painting the bubble on. I think this overall worked effectively and the bubble was the right size so I was able to fit all of the lyrics onto it. 

Inside cover 

For this cover, I decided to screen shot the last shot of my music video and then edit in in photoshop the same way as I had done before as this ties the digipak and the music video together nicely.

Construction of digi-pack: front cover

Front cover - Photo

To begin creating the white and black sketch drawing/cartoon like effect, I searched on YouTube for tutorials showing me how as I am new to Photoshop. In doing this, I found this tutorial:

This tutorial was really helpful as it taught me how to get this appearance and talked through every step. First I converted my image to black and white, I then clicked on Image then Image adjustments where I was able to find the different tools I needed to create the appearance. I first adjusted the levels to exaggerate the highlights and shadows of the picture, I decided to do this before the threshold as although the tutorial did it the other way around I found that some of his features were getting lost in the process as they were too light so doing it the other way around counteracted this. After adjusting the threshold to what I wanted it to look like I clicked on the curves option and adjusting the tool to create an S shape as this is what was done in the tutorial, this didn't make a significant difference but it didn't make the image look bad so I left it. After I decided to blur the image through selecting filter bar and then blur which lead to gaussian blur, and I put this to 1% to soften the edges as advised in the tutorial.Which left me with the image I desired. 

Steps 

Creating the background

To create the rustic appearing background like the poster background for Trainspotting, I figured the easiest way to create this was to use the clone stamp tool in Photoshop. This was quite tedious however I am very happy with how it turned out. To do this I uploaded the Trainspotting poster into Photoshop and used the clone stamp tool to remove everything apart from the background. I then used the clone stamp tool starting at the top right corner and then moving onto the document where I was making the background and started transitioning the clone stamp onto my image. I then did the same thing to emulate the texture of the circle in the middle and the shade. I decided the quickest way to do this was to (on the original image) clone stamp out everything other than the background of the circle and then re-clone stamp it and transition it onto my document.

The next step was fitting the image of David inside the circle. To do this I placed the image where I wanted him to be and all of the excess I removed through using the pen tool, this was useful as it left a smooth finish rather than using the polygon tool which can leave an unprofessional appearance.


After this, I began shading in David's face using the clone stamp tool once again to get the cream textured rustic appearance like in the Trainspotting poster. I then merged all of the contents of the circle together so that I could adjust the size to prevent having to redo certain steps. 

                    Typography

The next job was adding in the font, for my front cover I wanted a more minimalist appearance so I decided that I didn't want to crowd it with too many words. I decided to name the album renegades because I think the word will have a personal attachment to people in the target audience as the definition of renegades is 'a person who deserts and betrays an organisation, country, or set of principals'. Although this verb has negative connotations or traitor-ship and desertion, I believe that it will wring true for the target audience as one of the characteristics and ideologies of the rock genre is being anti-establishment and rebellious which is basically what the term means. On top of this, another reason for naming the track renegades is because the track I used for my music video is this song and therefore the name connects the two together. 

The font I chose for the title is called Porter, I downloaded it from Dafont into Photoshop as I think the appearance and typography looks more professional and suits the style more than any of the other fonts in Photoshop. For the colour of the font, I took inspiration once again from the Trainspotting poster as one of the words in the poster is black and the one beneath is the cream shade that is used in the circle so I thought that replicating this would tie the two nicely together. 

Digi-pack planning

Originally for my digi-pack, I was inspired by pop art and wanted to create a similar effect like Andy Warhol's silk screen images of Marilyn Monroe, after completing the album cover I decided that i'm not happy with it as after getting feedback from class mates I found that people thought it was too colourful and they didn't like it that much so I decided to start again.

My old album cover front and back: 

Since the target audience for my artist is males, I think that the colour scheme is feminine and the whole aesthetic isn't what I was going for. However in this process I have learned the basic way to use photoshop which I can put back into the construction of my new album cover and digi pack. 

New Idea 

The iconic posters for the film Trainspotting are my inspiration for my album cover. Particularly from the poster to the left. Trainspotting is an anti-social realist film, covering areas like drugs, gangs and violence. Although my music video doesn't cover these themes specifically, my music video covers themes of vandalism (spray painting) and shoplifting in reasons behind are similar as Renton chooses a life of addiction because he is against materialism and the establishment and I am trying to get a similar ideology behind my music video through suggesting that they don't need the material things in life they just need their friendship.