Where Ideas Have Come From

Rihanna's 'music of the sun' album and Beyonce's 'Bday' and 'Greatest Hits' album have been big inspirations for me.

When I first drew my mock up, I think it's fair to say that it was almost a replica of Rihanna's album.  But of course when it came down to taking the pictures, things had to change.  

Rihanna's extreme close up image was what I wanted for my front cover, simply because it is easy, it takes a lot of space up, and it is a basic feature of an upcoming musician's first album cover.  It's not an extreme close up but this is what I plan to use.

I planned to take the picture against a water background (Excel), but when it came down to focusing on the camera I was using, it was a struggle, so I thought I would make things easier for myself and go against a plain background.  The water technique was inspired by Beyonce's front cover of Bday, even though her's was the bright blue sky.

The back cover was again inspired by Beyonce's Bday album, which was a close up/side shot of her tilting her head back, and a blurred out background of branches of trees.  However, after thinking about it, I realised that Beyonce could pull this off because she is a well known artist - 'Deavian' couldn't.  

So looking back to Rihanna's album, I fell in love with her idea of her girly pose in her bellytop with the tracklist falling down one side.  Although I'm sitting rather than standing for my back cover, the idea of placing the text for the tracklist on the left side was taken from Rihanna.

The rest of my images were inspired by Beyonce's 'Greatest Hits' Album.  The full body length shot of her used on the page where she thanks her producers and everybody who contributed really stood out to me, but again because I'm not Beyonce, I had to tone it down a little and not use too much of my 'sexuality'.  She also has close ups on the rest of the parts of the digipak and that is something I plan to do, because I want my 'fans' to see as much of me as possible.

My original colour scheme was also inspired by both Rihanna and Beyonce.  Beyonce's use of the natural colours such as green and blue reinforced her simpleness, but then the use of the colour gold represented her wealthiness.  Rihanna's use of gold for her font represents how wealthy she pictures herself being, and that's a message I would like to send off as the musician. 

Gold, white and black will probably be my main colours, as the gold symbolises my upcoming wealth, and the black and white symbolise me being a newcomer to the music industry.  If possible, I would like to include green and blue in the pictures somehow, but I doubt it will work.