Major Project Beginnings
- Mar 22, 2019
- 4 min read
My Major Project will be based around producing useable album cover art, promotional material, merchandise designs and an element of animation for London-based music student, Louie Marlow.
I plan on providing him with several album cover options which he can choose from and use for his own major project, for which he is composing his own album.
I will also be producing a short, looping animation which could be used in place of a music video. For this I have considered the different formats and I will be making sure they are suitable for use on YouTube and potentially Spotify.
As well as this, I will be creating designs that can be used for merchandise. I want to create some prototypes of t-shirt designs, posters, and some smaller objects such as badges and stickers.
This project has a real purpose and my work is actually going to be used publically by someone. It will be a lot of work and will require a lot of trial and error, and I will be receiving feedback often. Although this is my final project, I want to keep in mind that Louie is hoping to use something I produce, so I don’t want to completely disregard his opinions and ideas. I will need to consider all the different designs I produce and how they will work with certain practices e.g layers of a screenprint compared to digital work. I will be using lots of different methods and testing out different materials to see what works best.
There’s lots of different skills involved in this project that will contribute towards my portfolio. I’m also hoping to expand my animation skills and have something I’m proud of at the end which I can use in my showreel. I will also get to do some printmaking (screen and riso) which is something I enjoy and don’t get to do very often.
This project should show that I am capable of working collaboratively and also that I can produce work that has more of a commercial purpose. I haven’t really done anything along these lines before and so I feel it will fill a gap in my portfolio.
Louie describes his music style as “psychedelic-pop music influenced by bedroom pop and lo-fi aesthetics.” He’s currently working on an EP, but has sent me a few of his older songs to listen to and take inspiration from (some of which will appear on the EP as they haven’t yet been released.)
He says that his lyrics are mostly centered around negative feelings such as anxiety and depression, with some songs being very upfront about that, but some being quite abstract.
Some of his main influences include singer/songwriters such as Sufjan Stevens, Elliott Smith, St. Vincent, (Sandy) Alex G, Foxes in Fiction, Mac Demarco.. as well as Psychedelic pop and Post-Punk bands like Animal Collective, Gang of Four, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Joy Division, The Sound, New Order.
Below are some links to a couple of Louie's songs that I will be creating illustrated artwork for, 'Spade' and 'Secrets'.
Due to Louie's music coming generally from quite dark and negative emotions, I wanted to create illustrations that reflect this, which to me is a challenge as I am usually quite bold with colours and tend to focus on positive topics. We discussed this together and decided we both liked the idea of using gritty textures and also deep, contrasting colours. In terms of the actual illustrations, we discussed the use of geometric and psychedelic themes, which I haven't really done much of before, but often find that I love illustrations that follow that theme. I also want to improve my use of perspective within this project, which is what I often get told I should focus on when I receive feedback.
Below are a few examples of what I mean, as well as a link to my Pinterest board:
In terms of animation, I want to produce looping gifs rather than full music videos. I got the idea for this from Nicholas Stevenson, who produced a series of gifs for Lillia Vargen. I found that they were really effective, yet simple, which I think is something that I will need to bare in mind in order to make sure I don't begin creating complex, time consuming animations and not leaving myself enough time to finish them. Below are examples of Nicholas' gifs:
Another animation I am taking inspiration from is from Palace's music video for their song 'No Other'. I find this animation extremely visually pleasing and particularly love the grainy textures and jittery animation style. The use of space is also really effective.
From here, I plan on getting some rough ideas together and I will then begin to illustrate them properly. I will most likely use these illustrations to produce animations, rather than completely starting them from scratch and making them different from the still image on the album cover.
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