Ancillary Task 1: Digipak Cover - Planning

On to planning now, and this stage began with some simple sketches by me, based on imagination and imagery I saw in the song. A lot of these were, admittedly, based also on the now-defunct narrative section, or at least vaguely, as we felt it would be better to give perhaps our narrative interpretation of the lyrics via the album cover rather than continue on the performance element of the main video, which we feel would simply become a little overused if continued into the promo material and covers.
Below are a series of sketches I designed for the front cover.

The first cover is a landscape style shot, taken from what would have been the rooftop where the narrative section would have concluded, with some vague litter and waste paper to further enhance the derelict look. It also has a small, retro-style radio on the ground, a reference back to the lyrics ('the broken radio was playing suicide'). The main focal point is the sky, with rolling, dark clouds coming in from the right and contrasting steeply with the bright sunshine on the left. This is meant to represent the bittersweetness of the original narrative - life seems bleak, but at the same time, there is hope.

This second cover is another cover which directly relates to the narrative, and is actually referencing the suicide at the end, where the female character holds back and doesn't jump with the male character. In this shot, it is a point-of-view shot from the female character, looking down off the edge of the rooftop at the male character below, whom, instead of being dead (as he would have been in the narrative), is standing and looking back up at the female character, as if to ask why she backed out. The problem with this one is that it is perhaps too strongly linked to the narrative, and if the narrative it is based on is not there in the video, it may look out-of-place on the album cover.

This third shot is perhaps my favourite of the designs. It is a variation on the first cover, but instead of having a rooftop, it used a field full of long grass, blowing in the breeze, as the landscape. The skyline is also a little different, with less sunshine here - it has a much more bleak look to it with the clouds sweeping across. I like it as it manages to capture the feeling of the narrative without actually directly referencing the defunct narrative structure, and therefore it will look good on the cover in it's own right.

This fourth and final design is another direct hint back to the narrative structure, as it shows what would have been the male character from the narrative standing in amongst the long grass of the field from the previous design. The sky is plainer, with no rolling clouds; in fact, there are quite probably no clouds at all, and instead replaced by a clear sky at sunset. This could invoke the ending of something (of life?), but at the same time, a sunset can be a beautiful thing.

More planning work to come...