Petra Metal Queen- cd cover design photo collage

I'm hoping body armor comes back into style- because this girl looks awesome. This style of fashion is both functional and nicely designed. This artist is a heavy metal rock musician from the UK who wanted to convey an image of her self on the cd cover that reflected her musical persona. Every now and then a design project comes along in which the client has a very specific image in mind and it's up to me to visually replicate that idea. I worked on this design job for over a month. It took longer than I expected but it also turned out better than i expected. The client basically gave me a photo of her face and I came up with the rest of the body and background. I used photoshop to compose this piece out of a collection of photos. It's not as noticeable now, but the figure pictured above is made up of 5 or 7 different humans, including arms, neck, ears, face, breast, legs, etc.. they're all body part photos taken from different humans. I felt like a mad scientist. Design-wise these kinds of projects are difficult because you're asked to combine a bunch of elements and make them look like one cohesive piece. I started by working in grayscale (this helps make all the elements look the same because they're only black and white) I then tailored all the body parts to fit the correct size and lighting, after this I added color and overlaid textures and filters to make it one happy design.

Cautiva- Heavy Metal Rock cd package design. Spanish rock musician album "Human"

Hello again readers- check out my latest design for a heavy metal/death metal musician from Spain- that's right their rocking out over in Espana to. Actually I'm working with a few metal bands from Spain right now- there must be some kind of heavy metal rock renaissance going on over there or something. The name of the band is "Cautiva" and the album title is "Human"- I developed a few different cd cover options for him before he chose this one. He was pretty specific about what he wanted. When it comes to Art directing there's a right way and a wrong way- luckily working with Cautiva, he new the right way- and he brought out the best in my skills by challenging me and being open to my ideas as well as having some ideas of his own. I came up with the cd cover concept above after pondering the meaning of human suffering and trying to condense it into it's essence in a creative way. The imagery is morbid and very bloody but also intriguing by inviting the viewer to look closer and observe what actaully is happening in the art. The human hands are protruding from within to shed the battered shell of a human child with a dauntingly insidious face, representing the idea that we're all human on the inside regardless of the facade we wear, what experiences we've been through, etc. We're all the same at our core- Human. and valuable at that- as humans we have intrinsic value- regardless of how shattered we are- we can't be robbed of our worth. Example- if you take a twenty dollar bill and crumple it up, step on it, rake it through the mud, spit on it, urinate it on it, etc... I bet that twenty dollar bill is still worth twenty dollars and you can still go out and buy a nice meal with it.
Also above is the traycard art for this cd package design- the humanoid inside the box assumes the fetal position as life sticks more swords into his existence. Below was the first cover design I submitted that was not used- however the client liked the art so much he still wanted to use it- so I used it on the traycard.