Problem: Completely redesign the cover art for an album of your choosing and create an entire package for Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Software: AfterEffects, Blender, Photoshop, Illustrator, Procreate
Background: This album redesign was conceived during my fall semester in FA-COMD-476-01 Motion Graphics & Illustration at Pratt. We were told to pretend to have never seen the existing album and create a whole new design package that matches with the album's content.
Visual Moodboard
Early Sketches
Procreate Yokai Imagery Iterations
Creating the Visual Language
It was difficult to break away from a design I was familiar with. K/DA's All Out has been for a year already when I started this project in October 2021.
Around that time, I was inspired by imagery from Akira, the 1988 Japanese animated film set in a dystopian cyberpunk setting. I was also a huge fan of K/DA's debut song "POP/STARS". I knew that I wanted to incorporate imagery of Japanese demons (or "Yokai") and mix it with the colors of the Hong Kong night-time landscapes after watching a video from Vox on the dying art of neon signs in Hong Kong.
After I compiled a mood board, I started to illustrate of a Yokai's face with a brush-like texture treatment in Procreate. Then, I modeled and rendered a 3D gem in Blender and finished the design in Photoshop with typography and visual elements to complement the visual style.
ORIGINAL ALBUM ART
NEW REDESIGN
The Final Deliverables
I animated the different elements of the redesign in AfterEffects (with the exception of the gem, which was rendered in Blender). I then used a system to create a cohesive system for each different deliverable. The final product included the animated album cover, a dynamic Spotify Canvas, a YouTube audio visualizer, and an Augmented Reality (AR) wearable T-shirt.
