Album cover artwork

A friend of mine is soon to release an EP (exciting!) and has asked me to come up with an album cover! I'm at the beginning of the process, so I'm just about coming to grips with the massive amount of responsibility that's been given to me.

As a massive music fan, over the years certain album covers have come to define the music itself. (T.Rex Live in Concert 1993; David Bowie, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust; every Led Zep album; Pearl Jam, Ten; Funkadelic, Maggot Brain; Guns and Roses, Appetite for Destruction; Pink Floyd, The Dark Side of the Moon; Foos, Santana, Blur, Stone Roses jOY DIVISION STEVIE NICKS AC/D- okay the list is quite endless.

The (allegedly) cold, hard truth is that the album cover has to reflect the songs perfectly. So after a good week of listening to nothing but the wonderful Will Dunn's unfinished EP, I felt brave enough to begin coming up with ideas.

When in doubt - run to collage. That's my motto. So I did. Results below. I'll work these into proper working designs soon.

^I was walking past a book shelf in my house when I accidentally took a photo with my phone. It came out blurry, but I loved the texture and the colours. I'm using it as a mock background for now (with possible use in the future?)

^Because a graceful-moving ballerina giraffe-butterfly is just what you needed to see today.

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Character designs

Penryn Folk After refining my original sketches (which, for the record, were way off style to begin with) I adapted my approach and made sure the eyes were not as round and far more in proportion. I actually really enjoyed coming up with these 6 Penryn characters! The colour scheme is gritty and representative of the age as well as being colourful. I love the bearded character second in the line. His jacket's all torn and patchy, plus he looks pretty trust-worthy. The blonde-haired girl in the green dress standing next to him is also one of my favourites. She has a bizarre mix of hesitancy and adventure in her eyes that I find refreshing (I hope other people see this too) I think the way her arms are hung by her side gives her an proactive personality. I'm told the woman on the far right looks like she could bake a really good loaf of bread. Little tweaks have to be made here and there, but overall I'm proud of this line up. Watch out for that cheeky lil k...

Penryn 800

PENRYN DESIGNS As art director, I'm putting together a rabble of Penryn folk to interact with Peter Mundy in our upcoming animation celebrating 800 years of Penryn! Designing these characters is proving interesting as it seems 17th century clothing is moderately undocumented. There's been a little bit of dreaded guess-work on my part. In these initial stages I've tried to encompass my own interpretation of the feel of cornish port-dwellers. Also I want to stop drawing women in dresses all the time. There's a lot to experiment with and consider at the moment- and you betcha' I'll update the blog as the process carries on.

Scribble time:

Glen. A4, drawn with a pencil I found on the bus. I began by drawing a huge nose and consciously decided to fiddle around with the normal placements of facial features. His ears are small and in line with his mouth; His eyes are wide apart and slightly rotund, yet still around halfway in the middle of the head; and his eye brows take the shape of clear lines, almost looking paved or carved into his face. Drawing bodies in proportion has always been a grey area. Call me mad but it's pretty exciting to think I have so much work to do to refine this, I'd love to become more confident in drawing full figures, as I reckon it's a weakness of mine. Glen is a cover teacher. He used to be a food critique, but one of his reviews caused the closing down of a restaurant owned by a guy called Dudley. Glen put him of work, leaving him homeless. But, feeling bad, promised to let Dud stay over in his house for a few nights. 10 years ...

A wellyboot of animated happenings

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