Evaluation

Feedback from peer assessment of the CD album cover / magazine ad

I was told that the colour of the CD's font was not distinguishable enough and was recommended to keep it a slightly sharper colour in order to attract attention to it. I've decided to make it a dark shade of red to indicate passion. Other than that, my cover seemed perfect and I am very happy with it how it had turned out as it has taken me a very long time and tremendous effort in Photoshop to create.

Initial sketch of CD cover art / magazine ad

This is my covert-art sketch which I am currently working on. (Click on it for a larger picture)
The rest of the album art will be linked in with this and the dead garden theme. :) This is going to be a single and I've designed the image to work well with the song as it represents the garden in my character's mind. As you can see the band name has been changed to "Seraphim", and "Garden of Decay" has now become the title of the single-album. Also, the girl in the picture is actually me which the girl in the animation is a simulacrum of.

This is the sketch for my print-advert which is kept in dark colours so that it links with the gothic theme. The grass symbolizes plant-life which links with the garden. The album title and the album are made to stand out by contrasting the colours and creating a glow.

Research - Analysing CD album covers

Here is my analysis of various CD-covers of genres associated with Rock.

Muse - Absolution

The cover-art shows a man dressed completely in black looking up at us who are seeing him from a bird's eye view. Above him are countless silhouettes of people all in the same position similar to a flock of birds. This may suggest that people are losing their individuality which also links with the album's title "Absolution" as if we are approaching a state of absolute conformity. Muse often deals with conspiracy theories and thus I believe this is his message on the cover. The colours are kept in tones of grey which I think adds to the sense of sadness and isolation. He is standing alone amongst the shadows which gives the sense of a cold and isolated Universe. He is different than the bird-people above and his solitude is highlighted through the camera angle as the viewer would appear to be placed with the silhouettes.

Sonata Arctica - For The Sake of Revenge

The cover-art shows a close-up of a wolf in motion. Its aggressive expression and barred teeth links well with the album's title, making it seem as if the wolf is looking for revenge. The wolf can also be interpreted as a representation of the band's lead singer who is commonly mentioned as having a "wolf-like" appearance. The colours are in shades of blue which fit well with the arctic theme that is their trademark.

Nirvana - Nevermind

This cover shows an underwater-shot of a naked baby swimming towards a dollar note, on a fishing pole. It illustrate how we as young are encouraged and lured into the material race of a capitalistic society. The boy is in a basic and natural state, but he is being stained by society's polluted values. The colours are in shades of blue to highlight the underwater setting. The boy is set up as the fish and the money is used to "reel him in."

In This Moment - Call Me (Single)

This was a cover of Blondie's "Call Me" which the band decided to release as a single. On the cover is lead singer Maria Brink dressed as Alice in Wonderland. She is lying, posing to the camera in a manner that suggests she is a call girl thus linking with the song's title which is written on a note in the upper right corner. There is a lipstick-kiss planted on it too. The frame around the picture is blue which fits well with her dress. She is lying on a red background that suggests lust and passion whilst her dress suggest a fairytale-like playfulness.

Theatre of Tragedy - Velvet Darkness They Fear

The band was during the 90's very fond of Shakespeare which served as a great inspiration for their songs.Their album themes were dark and Gothic as seen on the cover-art where a woman figure is lying scarcely dressed in velvet purple material. I understand the title as linking with the picture so it means "They fear to sin", as the woman is naked and yet covering herself. A typical symbol for the band during that period was to use roses as a simulacrum before they completely changed their image.

Final Edit - Feedback from Audience

I have now had my fellow Media Students watch my music video and their feedback was overall positive, though there was one scene that caused concern as it was too dark for them to see what was going on, so I went to change the brightness of the frames. I also removed a little bit of the animation as it was interfering with another scene. My audience especially liked the use of the double layered frames and the symbolism of the snake and apple.

Final Edit

After having rendered the video I saw that some of the clips were not fading in smoothly, resulting in "rough cuts" to the following scenes, so I had to spend another 2 hours to render an improved version.

This is the final edit which I am going to be showing. Had the project not been 580MB, then I would have uploaded it to YouTube and shown it on here.

It could have been done better I believe, had I had more powerful equipment but this was the best my computer could produce, so in that sense I have no regrets. I like the touch of animation that I added whilst pressed for time, though I admit the video takes some explanation before the audience would be able to understand it. I will elaborate on this during my Evaluation.

Conversion & Editing Difficulties

I'm currently experiencing some problems with the conversion of the format .MOD as Sony Vegas refuses to recognize the file type. I've attempted using Adobe After Effects for the editing, but my computer does not have the requirements to properly run the program.

My solution was to download yet another program to convert the format into .AVI, but the drawback is that this results in a very large file, so it has taken me a great effort and amount of time to get all the clips properly converted.

Sony Vegas seems to run the footage very slowly, which makes it difficult to lip-sync and create a proper fade-in and out between the shots. I believe this is mainly because of the amount of clips present in my video and the double layering of frames which eats all my computer's RAM.