Preliminary Work-Digipak Cover

For a preliminary work task I decided to create the front cover of a digipak. I knew that I also wanted to create a mini music video as a second preliminary work, so I decided to choose one of my favorite bands; "Milky Chance". Milky Chance is a German alternative pop folk rock duo with reggae and electronic music influences, made up of Clemens Rehbein as vocalist and musician, and Philipp Dausch as DJ. I really enjoy their music because it's a blend of many different genres which create a very unique sound.

I've never used a complex photo editing software, as even in my AS project I used a variety of apps on my ipad instead. But because I want to advance and develop my editing skills this year, I decided to attempt using a more complex software. I found an online editor called "Photopea" which is almost exactly like photoshop, but free of charge, and this is what I decided to use. I found it pretty difficult, so I mostly played around with the more basic tools like layering, blurring, filters, and erasing. After a lot of experimenting, I found that I didn't like any of the results, and it was difficult to make sense of the different tools. I decided to go back to my ipad and use an app which I am used to, and comfortable with. I used PicsArt to create my own interpretation of one of Milky Chance's album covers. The original album cover looks like this:

I decided to find a different picture of the two of them, and create a new interpretation. Here is the picture which I chose:

I chose this image because firstly, I really enjoyed the colors, and I felt like I would have a lot of room for interpretation as the sky in the image is so empty, and their skin and clothing have such a large contrast in color to the background. It's also relatively alike to the original photo used in the album cover, making it easier for me to stick to the original idea and theme.

I don't have much experience with this kind of "collage" photo editing process, so this was definitely a new thing for me. I tried my best to create layers which correlate and go with each other, trying to keep the results from looking too tacky or unprofessional.

The first step to this process was cropping the original photo into a square, and altering the background a bit.

I then proceeded to add "paint smears" in strategic areas, following the idea of the original cover. I chose to only use the color black for the paint smears, as there was so much color going on in the back and foreground already. After I added the smears, I added some white lines resembling tears in paper, like in the original cover, and then it was time to add the font. I had some trouble deciding on which font to use, and I couldn't figure out how to get the sort of "erased" effect like in the original cover. I ended up just choosing one that looks like a bit like jagged, messy handwriting, and made it white. The font is definitely my least favorite part of the final result, as it looks a little bit too clean and crisp, so if creating this in the future I would probably try to figure out a way to make the font match a bit better. However for the purpose of this preliminary work, I figured that it was good enough,

Here is the finished result:

There is definitely room for improvement, however I do feel like it is a pretty good first attempt, and it is a creative interpretation of the original. It is definitely very busy and colorful, but this is their style, and I feel like it captures their essence in an accurate and believable way.