So it all started when my good friend Josh, who's also a very talented musician, asked me to do an album cover for him. He had a very specific vision in mind, and I was unsure of my ability to deliver on what he wanted.
As I got started, I hit a couple roadblocks, but eventually got by them through some clear communication with Josh. 9 hours and 10 mock ups later we had our final product and I'm going to show you steps that I took to make it possible.
This is the picture that I took. I didn't want to have to deal with stock photography so I just took the picture myself. This was taken handheld at like 1/25 of a second at 70mm so it's not the sharpest of pictures, it's also not that straight... But it gave me a starting point.
After that I isolated the part of the skyline I wanted to use. You can see I took out the bridge, some buildings on the left, and burned out a large portion of the front so I can get a good usable skyline.
After the 2nd picture I hit a brick wall. I emailed Josh what I had and asked him what he wanted. Josh wanted the city to be underwater. I had a couple ideas on how I wanted to accomplish this but I ended up going with the simplest way. It took a while to get the colors and lighting to match but eventually I got it. I sent this to Josh feeling proud of my work and feeling that I've gotten something close to a finished project. Then Josh shot back an email asking me to make it look "older" or something ridiculous...
This part of the process took the longest because I had no idea how to make a city look "aged" or "damaged" or "grungy". Figuring out what to do took a while and then what I ended up having to do was working within the picture I had and putting in all the individual details painstakingly by hand.
I can't remember how long this took, but when I started the sun was up, and when I finished the sun was down.
It's pretty crazy for me to see the original and the finished project. I look forward to starting my new company for creative visuals/independent film studio. I consider this project to be a step for the new company. I have a lot of ideas I want to see become reality.
Check out Josh's new EP available now for FREE!
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