Finishing The Album: Step 14 - Back Cover

Here is my initial stab at the back cover. I actually like it a lot. The verbage will need to be enhanced a little, but the idea is to show where it will be, not what it will say.



Of course, the order of the songs is totally tentative. That just happened to be the order I put them together in for the demo CD. SOME thought went into it, but I'm certainly not married to the order.

Finishing The Album: Step 13 - ok, I Lied

I can't resist. Here is the unfinished concept of the front jacket. I'm still not sure if this will be a folded piece, which will free up two more surfaces for art, or if this will be printed on one piece of card stock. So the BB part would be the back side, facing inwards. The desert photo would be the front, facing out.

duh.



I figure A pic of bill and his bio would go on the left hand side of the inside, and the right side would be reserved for yours truly. Or a couple pics, and some bio info. Or some random thoughts. Cuz I'm so random.

Finishing The Album: Step 12 - More Art

I spent about two and a half hours working on the artwork for the cd box. It's coming along really nicely. I don't have anything to show right now, because I'm not a fan of showing off works in progress.

But these are just concepts. They will need refining, and I'm certainly open to imput. Yeah, I said iMput. With an "M". Just like we do at the office.

Anyhow, my plan is to have the concept art finished tomorrow. I'm shooting to have a demo package all put together before I go to bed tomorrow.

Finishing The Album: Step 11 - CD and Art

I burned the CD of all of my mixdowns so far. iTunes helped. Actually, it did most of the heavy lifting.

I also downloaded a bunch of templates from the Disk Maker website for the jewel box artwork. I think we're going to go the cheap route. Have the front cover just be a two sided piece. No fold out. Back side will be one sided. So when you lift the CD out of the jewel box, you don't see any artwork. Never liked that much anyway. It's supposed to be all about the music!

I'm hoping to put together some rough artwork tonight, just so I can get a mock up CD ready to ship out to BF/Ripstick.

Finishing The Album: Step 10 - Cover Art Tweak

I wanted to see how this cover would look without all the visual noise on it, so I removed it entirely. Looks pretty clean! And if you didn't know any better, that might ACTUALLY be Bill in the foreground.

Finishing The Album: Step 9 - Finished MixDowns

Today at lunch I came home and cranked out the last few mixdowns. For the most part, I didn't really turn any knobs, just output them the MP3. Next step is to burn them to a CD, get a copy to Fischer, and listen to it myself a few times.

Finishing The Album: Step 8 - Mixdown 'Splosion

Tonight I did mix downs of each of the songs that are album bound. I made a few little tweaks to each song as necessary, but nothing major.

The real point here is to put together a collection of the best and current mixes, and get it off to Bill for listening.

In my opinion, we are in the "showstoppers only" phase of the process, which means that unless there is something CRITICALLY wrong with the song, my feeling is that we should just plow ahead.

Because sitting on our hands an analyzing this to death has gotten us really far to date.

or not.

It's A Lizard!

Ok, so this is not album related. I get that. I was goofing around on my computer tonight, and ended up doing a little video capture project. I stumbled onto the 8mm tape of "operation mexicali", which seemed like a good candidate for capture.

What was surprising was what was at the beginning of the tape.



This was really just a fun exercise to see if I could learn how to automate volume within a clip. I did.

And this is also meant to fuel Bill's fire to eventually make "Stickmen: The Movie"

For those of you who do not understand the historical significance of this clip, don't feel bad. There's probably only five or six people in the world that do.

Finishing The Album: Step 7 - Artwork and Photos

I did some playing around with Jeff's photos, since most of them are just great. Here is an example of how I just dropped a new photo into my existing template. Granted, the arrangement doesn't work perfectly with the existing text and visual noise, but you get the idea.



And for reference, here are the other photos that I consider interesting, and will take a shot at integrating them into the cover artwork.

Finishing The Album: Step 6 - Artwork and Organizing

I spent some time this evening organizing my files on my computer. I got all of the "Frankenstein" versions of the songs loaded onto my desktop, in a new folder. I do this to preserve data integrity. You know, in case something happens to my external hard drive, or if for some reason I screw up a song beyond hope, I will want a version I can revert to.

I am sad to learn that a lot of the research I did for the album cover has been lost. I originally saved off a lot of photos I found that I thought would make good cover art. I still have my master "High Desert Mystery" photoshop files, but those were really just conceptual work.

The GOOD news is that with a little google magic, I was able to find Jeff More's Flickr page, which is where I originally found so many of the photos I was considering. For reference, here is a link.

I've also decided to start adding a bit of a description to my post titles. Numbered posts will not make for good reading by future generations of fans. right?