Colour and Animals

 Before I started resketching I first of all exaggerated the shapes of the initial sketch to see if I should do this for the costume as well.  It didn't have an interesting effect at all.  The problem is when you start to do this it also very quickly becomes like an anime costume as they take traditional clothing and exagerrate elements.  I prefer to keep a simpler shape like this and add lots of details to make the costume different.

 I drew the costume out from different angles to see whether it was actually buildable.  This is something mainly important to the construction department.  Other departments are generally happy with a front on design.  I decided to give him trousers because the costume had become very top heavy.

Next I changed a couple of bits of the costume.  I also wanted to have more New Zealand elements zo I changed the midrif belt into a lizard like the native Tuatara.  I stuck to general natural colours as he is a hunter and needs to be camouflaged.

I added some protectors to the sleeves.because I felt that looks more complete than baggy sleeves.

I then made a display sheet to show the origin of the different costume parts but also what some of the panels will be in reference to when I emboss them.

Finished reading Costume 101, Interview Questions, New Research Questions

These are the notes I made on the rest of the Costume 101 book.  I have also written out here which questions I need to find more for.  Based on this I have kind of figured out what question I need to ask costume deisgners in the interviews.

Another thing I still have to do is sit down and analyse the costumes in films.  I have written out genres and then tried to fit films to the genres that could be interesting.  I think a couple will change and I still have to pick a couple.

New Questions that have popped up so far while doing research are:

1. What are the restrictions of designing for historical film?
         -What are the differences between designing for hostorical and completely new world (fantasy/sci-fi) films?
2. What inflence does a genre of a film have on the costume design?

I know the answer to the first question and I hope to learn more about the second from the interviews and film analysis.

Book layout

 The next thing I wanted to figure out for my CD Cover was how many pages I would need to do.  I don't feel that every song needs a full ring page and I don't think the book would look as good with 12 rings as it woudl with a fewer number.  I will be trying out the ring pages in the next couple of days to confirm this theory.


I decided to give the Prolog a full page, to make the concept clear of the rings and give a inroduction to the theme of following the deer through the forest.

I thought of the potentially of making a metamorphoses stag so that you place a cylinder in the centre to view the image.  This idea is not really relevant so I won't be doing it.  It doesn't add anything to the theme and would be a better idea if the whole book was done like that (idea for the future :D).

Andro will also get a full page as this a a circle dance so I would like to take benifit of the page's shape to make a visual circle dance.

Unda and Von den Elben will share a page as I feel these themes will visually combine well.

The next page will be quite a few together.  Ne Aludj El, Deva/Punagra (these are two songs but in Faun's sleevnotes they are handled as one story) and Wind & Geige.

I haven't written out ideas for the other pages yet but the next will be Isis and Cernunnos, the two songs with Deities' names as titles, and the last lyric page will be Egil Saga and Fort

Light -> Enlightenment

I was thinking about the theme of Light in the CD Cover and a main idea that sprang out was Stained Glass windows. If you stand outside the church you can't see what the windows are, but once you enter the church and sun shines through them you have the most amazing windows.  This for me is very symbolic of religious and spiritual enlightenment: the entering of a holy place to gain enlightenment and discover new and beautiful things.

Image Above: These were my thoughts before trying out the pages.

I decided to try out using sheets with some images to see what effect it gave.  The idea was that eventually these pages would be combined with my previous idea with the rings of the tree.

Initially I just placed the pages over the top of each other, but you really can't see through the pages which is good in a way because that was the idea behind it.

And when you hold up the images to the light it does work, the images do become visible, but it does make it very hard and unpractical to look at the book especially if the book were larger and had the cut out holes in the centre.. 

 I tries it with black paper in between because another problem is that by using see through pages instead of paper one immediately looses the capability of putting text on the back of the pages.  The visibility is still low which is good.

 I tried it with brown to keep with the natural feel but you immediately loose the concept of enlightening.

I don't think I will end up using this see-through page idea.  Although it is interesting I prefer the idea with the tree rings and I don't feel I can succesfully gel the two ideas together.  I could combine the see-through idea with the loose leaves idea but I would still have to make a seperate booklet to put all of the text in so I don't think this is the right go.

A Couple More

Did a couple more designs for the costume.  I abandoned the first one with the big swirly bits pretty quickly because I just didn't think it looked right.  I liked the bat wing though so I kept that part for the next sketch.  I quite like this last design.  I feel it has more balance than the previous ones and has a good combination of native New Zealand animals (bats, birds and lizards) and craft (weaving).  I'm going to sketch this last one out from the different view points (sides and back) to see if it works and what improvements are needed.  I would also like to start thinking about the illustrations that are going to be embossed into the leather soon.

I haven't actually put any pictures on yet of New Zealand Bats or Lizards so here they are.

Uenuku - First Sketches

I decided to just draw the front for now.  When I get a design that looks more interesting I will draw it from the other angles.  For my comment and thoughts see the picture.  These really are the first tries so yeah there are a lot of bad ideas in there :)

Merchandising

Another important thing I have to decide on is what the merchandising products are going to be.  First of all I wrote out a list that had products that are often used for merchandising and products that are popular with the target market.

I was pretty excited about the idea of making a set of playing cards.  I thought at first I could repeat use art from the album cover but there would be little point of people buying the cards then if they already had the album.  I ended up listing a few other games that would mean less work than illustrating all of the playing cards.  My favourite idea was a chess set as I had read in the sleevenotes that two of the band members hobbies was playing chess together.  I figured out what the characters could be on either side to make them more relevant to the Album "Licht".

I did a quick sketch to see if I could make a round board (to go with the cover idea) but that would mean the spaces would be too small in the centre and the moves too confusing.  I ended up deciding that this would still be too much work if I still had to make the whol book, other merchandising and still work on my other project, which isn't exactly small either.

I also made a short list of the more logical items for the merchandising with a quick description of their benifits and relation to the album.  I have decided to design the items with a circle around the first letters.

Cernunnos

This was a material and style experiment more than anything.  I took the thee of the Prolog and Cernunnos and drew the Cernunnos scene from the Gundestrup Cauldron (an ancient artifact found in a bog, now kept in Copenhagen, Denmark).

I painted the first layer in acrylic...

...drew the top layer with felttip...

...and combined the two layers and added a border in Photoshop.

I'm still not sure whether to use something like this or not. I do think the black makes the plain painting look a bit more interesting and importance can be shown by combining the coloured figures and the purely black and white ones.  I still need to try out some different stuff before I can conclude what I'm going to use for my CD Tree Book.

CD Cover Shape/Form

An important part of the CD Cover to me is the actual shape and form it will take.  What I mean is that I don't want to make a standard Jewel Case CD Cover but more of an inventive bookform that will add meaning to the album.

I wrote down the ideas I had so far and then I made some mini very rough protoypes to get a visual on the ideas.

I started pretty simple with just a fold-up cover -> very boring, doesn't add any meaning to the theme of the album.

Continuing on from this point I tried a folding cover instead but it still wasn't anything particularly interesting.

I then combined the square shape of the first tryout with the fold out idea of the second and added pop-up trees.  With a bit more work it could be a fun idea. Sadly pop-up is such an art in itself and as I don't have a lot of experience with it, I don't think I could do it justice.

 Keeping the layered tree idea I decided to make a cutout tree-scape that folded up.  It looks quite cool but it would be tricky to incorporate all of the songs which is what I want to do.  One would also have to be careful to avoid making it too much like a Christmas Card.

 

Instead of doing something folding next I made a little box and put cutout leaves in it.  It's quite funny, because in Dutch sheet music is called "blad muziek" which can also translate as leaf music. I quite like this idea but it just seems a bit too simple in some way.

I decided to go back to the book form at this stage.  I stuck with the tree theme but this time I decided to include the previously discovered circle shape.  When one think tree and tree I certainly think of the rings inside the trunk that show how old the tree is.  I made a small book (not with the right amount of pages because it was so small) that takes you through the tree, each page being a ring of the tree.

This one did seem a bit simple in shape, so I remade it.  I cut out the top page to make it the shape of the tree and added a roots page at the back.  I made these roots stretch out so it looks like you viewing the tree from above. Although it looks cool, I'm not sure how practical the root page is for printing on large scale.  I'm very happy with this idea and think that this will be the one I will develop further.  It adds meaning to the theme of travelling through the forest but in a more Druidic form.  The Druids believed that trees held great knowledge and this would reflect that.