Music Video: June 2014

Friday, 27 June 2014

Digi-Pack Jennifer Robinson

This is the Album cover for Calvin Harris's album Ready for the weekend. I chose this album cover because it is different and eye catching. It also is a good example to demonstrate the skills that I have on Photoshop. I took a photo of myself in the dark room pulling the same pose as the girl with plain sunglasses on so on Photoshop I then needed to add the diamonds.

This is my version of the album cover, although it is not completely the same I took a photo of myself and dragged it into Photoshop to then edit using the same techniques and skills to create the album cover above.

This below shows my initial photo I took, and my final one to look like the lady on Calvin Harris's album cover-

From my original image I turned it into a black and white effect and played around with the contrast to make it more like the album cover that Calvin Harris has.

This is the back of Calvin Harris's album cover-

I took a photo of my hair to then use as the background of the back of my album cover to then edit-

I then used a lot of different effects and texts to edit the photo and create the back album cover. This is what I created-

This is how I created my front album cover in Photoshop-

I started of with this image which I took myself on the front camera of my phone. I tried to get the light shining on my face to make it brighter and my facial features clear. I used plain sunglasses as I did not have diamond ones so I thought I could then edit them on in Photoshop.

I then dragged the image into Photoshop to then start editing to look similar to the Calvin Harris album cover.

The next step was for me to turn the image into black and white to match the colours of the album cover. I clicked on image at the top and then black and white and played around with the effect until i felt like the colours looked similar to the Calvin Harris cover and the image its self looked good.

Both the screen shots show me doing this step.

This is what the photo looked like after i turned it into black and white.

I then had to play around with the contrast and brightness to add more white effect in the picture to look more like the album. This screenshots shows me doing this. I also then cropped the image of myself to make myself in a similar position and size to what the lady was like on Calvin Harris's version of the album cover.

I then wanted to add a black background to my album cover as Calvin Harris's has that to so I took a plain black image and dragged it into Photoshop.

I then dragged the photo of myself onto the plain black image and unlocked the layers at the right hand side so i was able to work with both of them.

I cropped the image with the cropping tool so it had a black border around the photo of myself. I also changed the opacity of the image of myself so you was able to see the black through the photo and also meant the black border faded in more. The screenshots above showed how I did this.

This is what the photo looked like after I had added the black border and changed the opacity.

I then needed the text from the Calvin Harris album cover which runs along the side. I cropped the image and copy and pasted the text onto the photo of myself and positioned the size of it to fit my photo. I also decreased the opacity as well so that the text faded in to the image. One of the screenshots showed how my version looked after I added the text to it.

Next i used the magic wand tool on the Photoshop document of Calvin Harris's album version document to select some of the diamonds on the glasses and copy and pasted them onto my own sunglasses playing around with the size and angle of them. I carried on doing that selecting different parts of the diamonds on the sunglasses until the sunglasses were eventually filled up with diamonds like they are on the Calvin Harris version. I screenshot both the process of adding the diamonds and the final outcome once all the diamonds were completed and the sun glasses were filled.

This is what my final completed version of the Calvin Harris album cover looked like after all of the editing on Photoshop which is shown above.

Once I had created and finished both the front and back cover for my remake of the album I had to look at what the dimensions of the CD case actually were so I was then able to create the spine for it. The dimensions were 12cm (120mm) and 8cm (80mm) in size. Below is the spine that i created for the Calvin Harris 'Ready For The Weekend' album cover-

Evaluation-

Overall i think my album cover looks similar to Calvin Harris's. Although the diamonds on the other girls glasses look more natural and realistic i think i created a similar image. I got the composition and camera angle slightly wrong compared to the album, and definitely do not look like the model it still has the same subject matter, effects and font and writing, so overall i think is very similar from both the front and back.

Digi-Pack Potential Album Covers- Jennifer Robinson

These are some of the album covers that I looked at to then pick the best one in my opinion, to then recreate my own version for using myself and Photoshop.

Calvin Harris- Ready For The Weekend.

This is the album cover I decided to use to recreate my own version. I really liked this album cover and thought it was a bit different. I felt like this cover would allow me to use my editing skills in photoshop to the highest potential which I wanted and I could look similar to the girl so it allowed me to get the album covers looking similar. I also like the way the text was presented on the cover and wanted to use the diamonds on the sun glasses to then transfer on to my own ones.

Ellie Goulding- Halcyon Days

This is one of my potential album covers that I was interested in using. I think it would show my skills on photoshop well and the album cover itself is very eye catching. I chose not to use this particular album, although I like it I feel like it is quite simple and does not challenge my skills enough in Photoshop so I wanted to use a more complicated cover. I also didn't feel like I go get myself to look similar to Ellie Goulding and would let the album cover down as it would not look as good.

Amy Winehouse- Back to Black

I also was interested in using this particular album cover for Amy Winehouse. I think it is a nice album cover and stands out, although quite simple. I liked the text on this cover as it was something a bit different. Once again I felt that I would not look anything like Amy Winehouse and that would have a negative effect on my final piece as i wanted the album covers to look very similar. I also think there is not much to edit and would not be as challenging as something else could be.

Adele- 19

The next album cover I looked as was Adele's. I liked the use of lighting used on this cover and also the use of the two fonts. Its quite simple and plain but looks really sophisticated and proffesional. I liked this album cover but once again felt like I could go for something a bit more challenging in Photoshop so I decided not to use this one.

Santogold- Starstruck

The final album cover I looked at was Santogold's. I liked the use of glitter used and this cover would show of my editing skills in Photoshop. It was very different which I also liked and I liked the contrast of the gold and white. The reason which i decided not to use this album cover, although it is very good is that I would look completely different to the woman on the album as we are complete opposites making it harder to edit in Photoshop for me and I felt like I would of struggled with it and in the end the final outcome would not really look similar, so I decided not to.

Digipack Hayley

Florence and the Machine

This is the front side of Florence and the machine's album cover, I did try and obtain an image of the track list on the back but it wasn't available on google. Because of this I improvised and created my own version of the track list. I chose this specific artist to replicate because i liked the use of lighting. However since the lighting studio was available i had to use iPhone flashlights, because this didn't have the desired effect I edited using photoshop.

This is before and afters of adjusting the contrast, saturation and exposure. Because the original photo (far left) was very dark i changed the temperature on the image so it was slightly tinted yellow and pink. I did this so it was more like the actual album cover and would therefore make would make it easier to layer me on top of it.

Specific parts of the original image had to be incorporated with my copy because my body position wasn't exactly the same as Florence's. For example i used her right arm and edited it to look like mine, I also did this

Potential Album Cover Hayley

The majority of album covers i have chosen are indie rock bands that are found on the chart. Because previously we've chosen to research the dance genre i found a popular dance artist and have chosen to edit this as well for research purposes.