Ancillary Task 1: Digipak Cover - Construction 1

Now it's time to assemble the cover.
Firstly, I took the opportunity of some adverse weather building to grab several pictures of the dark, sweeping clouds which rolled across the sky, and from these photos, we can derive background or imagery shots for the album cover and gatefold cards.
Below are a selection of photos which will more than likely be used in the construction process and in the digipak cover itself.
This first shot is a simple sky shot, almost exclusively all grey. This could be useful for a part of the digipak with lots of text, as it is relatively plain, with no real visual distractions. On the flipside, however, it is far too plain and uninteresting to use for a main attention part, such as the front cover.
This second shot contains some nice rolling clouds, and slightly different tones of the grey, with lighter patches counteracting the dark grey pervading across it. It isn't a huge difference, but enough to make it noticable. The only thing that does detract from it are the raindrops on the lense of the camera (it had just started raining at this point), but there is no reason why a section of this photo at least could not be used for the cover.

At the time of shooting, I was stood atop a corrugated iron fire escape, and as the rain fell, I noticed that there was a healthy puddle forming on the floor of the fire escape. Out of experimentation I snapped a photo of the puddle, complete with raindrops ripping the water. The results were much better than I expected, and I feel like this could definatly be used in the inside inlay part of the gatefold. However, as we want the clouds to be such a big part of the cover, this would not be used on the front cover.

This is a very dark photo I snapped at the height of the storm, showcasing a line of trees opposite the school buildings. The trees fit with the dark, gothic feel of the song and band itself, so if we can perhaps fit them into the digipak, then they will only serve to augment the imagery we already have. It is very dark, so the brightness and contrast will have to be edited up before it is used in any great length.


I couldn't believe how well this shot came out - it was snapped on a Blackberry camera phone from a moving car. This shot captures an unusual pattern in the clouds as the storm was dissipating, and this could actually be used in one of two ways - either as the main focal shot itself for the cover, or as an overlay for another shot, to use that unusual pattern and the colours of the clouds to good effect in tandem with another shot or a graphic within Photoshop.

With these photos, plus effects and tools we can use in Photoshop, we can create a cover and complete gatefold for the digipak, as well as an image to be integrated onto the CD itself.

More to come...