Completed Panel 4 - Digipak

Photoshop of Panel 4

This is an image from the forest where I filmed my music video. I added tone and decreased the saturation until the image was black and white.  

This is the image I decided to use as the main focus point of the back cover, I wanted the band sitting down so I could put the track list above their heads. I darkened the image slightly and added contrast to make the curtains look darker. 

I added a mask and faded the band image into the the forest image below it on the top of the image. 

I did the same thing for the bottom of the image. 

I put in the track list, I decided to have two columns so the 8 songs fit in the space. I changed the font to one that is slightly spiky to fit the metal genre. I looked at different colours for the text but colours like green and red were hard to see because of the pattern of the leaves in the merged part of the image.  

I rearranged the columns so they were about an equal distance from each edge and added a small disclaimer at the bottom of the image which most CD's have that includes information on the record label. 

The final panel, although a bar code may be added to give an authentic look to the CD.  

A colour version of the panel, I wanted to compare to see which looked better, but because my panel 1 has muted colours I decided to continue the theme and keep the original black and white image. 

Research into CD Adverts

Many metal bands do not advertise their CD’s in modern times, they advertise their gigs and live performances and at those performances they show the music on their albums to get their audience to buy it, so I will look at both posters and CD adverts to see which conventions metal bands follow. This is a Black Sabbath CD advert, but it has none of the reviews or star ratings that many CD adverts have, the main image of the advert is the band and the band name, the CD title is secondary. The background behind the band looks like a collage of newspapers and because of the title of the CD “Revolution in their Minds”, coupled with the newspaper and hippy-type clothing the revolution they’re referring to is the against the government and higher authorities. This gives an insight into their ideology. Black Sabbath was on the tail end of the 60’s and the hippy/ rebellious era. Metal is rebellious like the hippy movement was against the government and authorities however metal is more aggressive in showing their distaste and are verbally antagonistic and hostile while hippies preferred peaceful protests. This means than the Black Sabbath CD advert is not only appealing to the metal audience but the hippy ideology, the use of purple as the only colour reinforces this link. While the image is basic and fairly simple, it is made more interesting because of the intertextual links to a similar ideology in a different form.

The Pantera CD advert is for their album “The Great Southern Trendkill”. The advert does not show the band at all unlike Black Sabbath, the CD album shows a snake, and the advert has an image of the snakeskin which links the two together. The two share a common colour scheme of dark yellow, red and rusty orange. The central image in the advert is the CD album cover rather than the band (like in Black Sabbath’s advert). This advert follows convention, with features of the album highlighted and a phrase to show the audience it can be brought (for example: “Out Now”, “Now in stores”, or “Out on [date]”), this advert also has text at the bottom with information about production and distribution that is present on the back of most album covers, and a small logo of the company. The advert does not include any reviews or ratings, however they can be found online, but not on the band’s official site. In my research I have never seen a metal band put reviews of its work up on their own sites, this is most likely because it is a rebellious genre and so does not feel it needs praise. The roots of metal is in rebellion and self- assurance which is why the music is so loud, aggressive but also confident. The bands do not feel the need to sing their own praises, their music is supposed to be raw; it is not something that needs guarantee of quality from other people. I like the simplicity of the advert, it is straight to the point and everything about it is about the album, not the band. It is the complete opposite of the Black Sabbath advert where the album was a secondary objective. 

This is the System of a Down band’s fourth album; this is the advert for the album. Unlike in Pantera’s advert, the album is not differentiated from the album, but the advert looks like an extension of it. Like with Pantera’s advert it includes a prompt for the audience to buy it by including the date of release, which is uncommon in metal adverts as they have normally been released by the time the advert is shown. This album follows normal conventions of album adverts by including a website for the band; it also includes details of the production company at the bottom in small print. This album advert includes a suggested avenue from which to buy the album (Amazon.co.uk) which is likely due to the online proliferation of music. It also includes an advisory warning mark, due to the explicit words used in the lyrics which are increasingly common in metal genre. This mark is coveted by audiences because it is a warning from higher authorities so it looks like they disapprove of the album which makes the rebellious nature of metal more prominent.  Like the Pantera advert, System of a Down uses this advert solely to promote the album, and because of this the image from the album cover is the main feature, however this is the fourth album, so the band already has an audience base and has made a place in the metal genre, a newer band such as mine would likely need some depth to the advert as it is new and unknown to the audience.

This is the second album of the Swedish heavy metal band Scar Symmetry, which formed in 2004, this means it’s a relatively new metal band compared to when the New Wave of British Heavy Metal started in the late 70’s. Not only is it quite new, it is trying to make its name as one of the pioneering bands in a new wave of metal which they have named “The New Age of Melodic Death Metal”. This advert shows that even new bands follow the conventions set by the original metal bands. Scar Symmetry is attempting to redefine metal, and if it succeeds it would join the ranks of the most well-known metal bands such as Metallica and Motorhead. This advert is for the release of its second album “Pitch Black Progress”, released 2 years after the band formation, at this point the band was little known so the addition of the band in the advert is to help them become more widely recognised. This advert is closer to Black Sabbaths than Pantera’s. The album cover is not the entire focus of the advert, the band name and the image of the band is more prominent, while the CD album cover is slightly faded, considering Pantera and System of a Down is more known this dual use of the advert makes sense, I would think that the adverts would feature the band less as they became more known to the metal community. The advert has two links to different websites for the band, and a third link at the bottom for their record company; it is a common for adverts to include something from the record or production company (name, logo or website). What is interesting about this advert is the small text box under the name that reads: “For Fans of: Soilwork, In Flames, Shadows Fall”, these are Swedish metal bands. This idea is reminiscent of the ‘Recommended Films’ and ‘Other shoppers brought these items’ on sites such as Amazon and Netflix, in the age of Internet, this is common to see so it links to the modern technologies that audiences use nowadays, including websites for the band has the same method of reaching out to a wider audience online. My band will have similar conventions in the CD advert because of a similar situation of modern technology and the need for the band to be recognised and known to  create an audience base.

Completed Disc Cover - Digipak

This is my final choice for the disc cover, the black is generic for metal, but the green reinforces the anti-war ideology the band follows, this colour combination reflects both the conventional and unconventional parts of my band. I edited the image slightly to get rid of the parts of the cross that go off the disc shape so it all fits within the disc size. 

Note: I changed the cross hair image to avoid confusion, I also changed the cross hair from my Panel 3 image to match. 

Photoshop of Disc Cover

I decided on a simple design for my disc that matched the panel under it (Panel 3). Panel 3 features a cross hair so I decided to put that image on the disc. I decided on a single colour background because the panel below it had an image of the forest and I didn't want the two to look cluttered by having too many things going on, especially as the front cover is very detailed and as a new band a lot of images are being used to create the band image and convey the ideology so I thought a simple disc cover would compliment it well. I started by making a circle and cutting a circle out of the middle and giving it a block colour. 

I used the cross hair from my third panel so the images matched. 

I merged the two images and enlarged the cross hair so the middle of the cross hair is where the cut out circle is. Because the idea was so simple I experimented with the colours as the images below show. The colours I used are contrasting, and are generic of metal (black, red, white, dark blue).

I added a non-generic colour (green) because of the anti-war ideology of my band, this gives me a larger range of choices to see which colours fit with the rest of my album images best.  

Note: I changed the cross hair design in my final idea to avoid confusion and make sure the audience know what it is meant to be, the image used in the images above don't have enough similarity to other cross hair designs. 

Completed Panel 3 - Digipak

Note: Cross hair image has been changed from the original

Photoshop of Panel 3

This is the original image

This image is from the beginning of my music video, this image is very striking because of the vanishing point in the centre. The image has been darkened and some of the colour has been removed. 

I decided to put the lyrics to my song on this image rather than another image of my band as there is already one on panel 2 and will be another on the back panel. 

I curved the writing around the vanishing point, however because they are lyrics the image looks cluttered, I have decided to get rid of them. This panel would be under the CD so too much on the image would look messy. 

I have simplified the idea to having a cross hair like from a sniper. I started with a black screen and used a circular delete tool to make a basic circle. 

I made the circle smaller and used the pencil tool to make the cross in the middle. 

This is the completed cross hair, I took a section out of the middle so the vanishing point can be seen.  

I made the image smaller and moved it so the centre sits just in the middle of the tunnel of the vanishing point. I also changed the colour to white as the black was difficult to see on the background image. I faded the cross hair so it is not as obvious and has the sniper look. 

This is my final image, It is much more simple than my original idea as it is not as chaotic. When my CD sits over the image not too much is lost, especially if I have an image of the cross hair on my CD so the two go together and match.