album project write up

Culminating project artist statement/written report

            The concept of the band was for it to be a type of metal, glam rock, and/or visual kei, which have been considered music that can be angry. The adjectives for my band are: angry, angst-filled, emotional, energetic, and in-your-face.  The songs are mainly songs you can listen to, to process difficult information, if you feel angry, if you just feel upset in general, or everyday listening. The band’s personality would be lively and fun in concert but their music would be dark and full of emotion.

            The original idea is almost the same as the final product but with a few minor changes. Like the text for the band’s name is smaller then I first imagined but the size it is now makes the balance of the album’s cover better. I found at the beginning that it would’ve looked bad if I put everything in the center but when I zoomed the shot to make it a portrait shot it fit the frame pretty well compared to the medium shot. The photo I decided on is the best for the album because it creates emphasis on not only the text but his silhouette/dark person on dark background. The way the photos that are laid out makes your eyes start at the model then read the larger font at the bottom then the smaller font at the top. The colours create an aesthetic of darkness, while the text gives it a messy look and applies a type of purposeful un-organization. Not to mention that the shadows on the edges create a type of edginess or mysteriousness to the photo.  The reason most of the text is either red or white is because a majority of the background is dark blue tint with black shows, so the colours contrast nicely.

            I used Photoshop to put the photos together nicely, and I used a D3200 Nikon, with an 18-55mm lens for the photos. The photos I used were minimally edited, using only the edit options in the “adjustments” section.

            In some aspects I was happy with the end result but some aspects I find I could’ve done better. Like the way some of the text unintentionally runs off the page (on the back cover), and how the face is barely visible (on the front cover), but there was some aspects that I did like about it, for example: the way the text (album name, front cover) looks like its running off the page slightly, and the way the unmarked grave is giving off a darker aesthetic. So overall I’m pretty happy about everything and the way it ended up.

my surrealism project

       My message is that there is a boy who is being forced to do things he doesn’t want/getting peer-pressure. The reason one silhouette is black on a white backdrop, and one is white on a black backdrop is because the black backdrop represents a unpopular belief or way of acting, when the light backdrop represents a more “popular” trend of acting and behaving. The two silhouettes show two choices for the main “protagonist” in the middle, the two options that they are offering both have good and bad sides to them. The light silhouette is offering the protagonist happiness to be he but be socially “out-casted” and be considered “weird” or the dark silhouette tells the protagonist that he will be able to have popularity and social acceptance but he would have to change how he looks and acts.  The main protagonist is only seeing the shades of grey in each of the deals and is confused in what to choose.

I initially though of it a boy with the devil and angel on his shoulders or beside him, but I quickly scratched the idea and looked into other options. Some of the options consisted of pictures/sketches of two platforms with a boy on one and people on the other. I eventually looked back on the devil angel idea and started on it almost immediately. I started cutting out the wings and taking photos as fast as I could. This process took approximately two days then I had to take everything into Photoshop. At first I had a few troubles alternating the colors for the white silhouette because I was confused why the mask wouldn’t allow me to fill it in white but I just ended up selecting the silhouette and pressing the delete button and all those problems were solved. After that it was smooth sailing. And shortly after I finished I did this artist statement.

The technical skills I got from this were my Photoshop skills, initially I wasn’t good at Photoshop and I’m still not the best at it but I now don’t only know more but I know what I can improve on, it also showed me how to do silhouette photography which was very fun and educational. The conceptual thing I learned is that social anxiety isn’t just black and whit there is plenty of other ideas to think about and other point of views that can be put into thought. It also showed me that the there is more reasons for peer-pressure.