Sketching Digipak Ideas

Today, we sketched out the initial ideas for the digipak. We attempted to come up with some kind of star image that we would want to represent our artist to be, and this is what we kind of came up with:

One thing that we noticed almost immediately is that it is vital that we don't become too literal with the digipak, and don't relate it to the music video that much; this is because it may turn out to be boring and be very predictable. By putting this target forward, and not using our musicvideo or the name "Beatophone" as a base, we were able to avoid certain imagery such as the goggles, mad scientist's face, or scientist equipment, as well as a phone.

The next thing we realised was also that we aren't necessarily creating a star image for the mad scientist, but rather that he is a stand-in for the original artist, and is just featured (in this instance he is a hired actor). We are actually attempting to represent the instrumentalists which played in the background of the music video (Piano, Sax, Violin). We then had to really consider what we wanted to present these three and what their star image should be like. I imagine they should have a rather organic star image as this makes it easier to create an album artwork, without necessarily having to picture any people on it.

Nanci then came up with the idea to use imagery of iron lungs, but manipulating this image to look like an instrument, possibly the french horn. This would be a feasible idea as steampunk could possibly be a primary influence for our digipak and website design; this perfectly portrays a 1920's era, however also shows the modern influence of it. Robotic things work well with electronic swing, which is why it may be effective if we use something that portrays a lot of cogs or valves.

We then began to explore robot imagery, and were inspired to create a cute robot, pictured above. We decided that we like this imagery and that it fits well with the band, and possibly ties in with the music video quite well. I quite enjoy this idea, however can see a lot of work in it for me, which is fine. I think that the components of this robot can either be built as a vector, with a simple 1-2 colour scheme such as silver/bronze, or possibly build it in Blender, which will be a more challenging task.

We then began brainstorming ideas for the album, and it was suggested that we look up the name of the fear of timetravelling, but decided that this would be too ambiguous because it reflects the music video more than anything else and could end up being an issue. Chris, who is Thai (and speaks it), wrote down the word "Bolt", which looks quite cool written in Thai. The title would be quite ambiguous as well, however may intrigue and audience more. I can also see this font be written in a similar fashion to 1920s style pipes and so on, which would make the album cover quite cool.