Making Digipak

Below is a presentation i have made showing step by step what we have done to make our digipak.

Making Our Digipak1

After doing this we decided that the album cover looked abit dark and didn't match our genre which was RnB music. We decided that we should make the album cover more simple and add more neutral colours. From researching digipaks from other artists like alesha keys, estelle and leona lewis we decided to start from the beginning with producing a new digipak cover.

The picture we started with was...


We decided that we wanted to keep the background the same but just crop the image to the right digipak size. The background looks looks neutral like we wanted. We then used skin retouching techniques to make the skin look smoother and take away dark circles from the eyes.



This resulted in the image below...



We then needed to add the artist name and digipak name to the digipak. We decided that we totally wanted to change our font to something different. We wanted to add patterns to the font. We wanted the artist name font to stand out and maybe add a butterfly or star as part of the design. We found a scriped font on dafont.com that we liked.






We found this butterfly and added it to the font we chose as a design. We erased everything apart from the butterfly pattern.



This is what the overall design looked like.

We then used a basic font for the album name 'you made me'.



The front cover so far looks like this...



We then focused on the spine. We wanted to include a spine because we felt it was necessary to include one. We just added basic front from the printscreen above and pasted it vertically across. This is what it looked like...




Back Cover

We wanted to make the backcover simple and just add basic pattern. Because we used a butterfly in the font we wanted to use this in the design aswell. We also wanted to blend the design with the background which would be the same colour as the background on the front cover.



The image above shows that the background is the same colour as the front cover and the font is positioned in the same place as the front cover.



We then added the butterflys and blended them into the background. We also added a swirly pattern. Below is the picture that i used to get the swirly design from..



We made the patterns darker and croped a certain part and added it to the background as part of the butterfly design. We also blended this in so you could read the text of the song names.

This is what the backcover looks like so far...



We have also added a barcode which is needed on the backcover which we found out from research. We also need to add record label logo's and album information. Our record label was polydor records. We added the logo of our record company and we added text at the bottom saying

' visit nainakay.co.uk and insert cd to view bonus tracks and the making of breathe easy music video'.

This is part of our features of our digipak.

This is what our final back cover looked like.



Inside Panels

From our research we have found that inside panels always relate to the outside cover of the digipak. We decided that we wanted to include a picture for one of the panels atleast and keep the other one simple designs.

The picture that we intended to use was this...



This is why we chose this picture...

Picture 1

We adjusted the picture slightly to make it look more professional for use in a digipak. Firstly we made the face look smoother by using the smudge and the blurr tool but only where it was needed.



The circled area in the printscreen above shows the tools that i used such as the blurr tool and the smudge tool.

We then used the clone tool on areas that we thought it was needed. The point of this tool is to clone areas of an image and apply them elsewhere on that same image. We wanted the hair to cover the ear more on the image so we used this tool here.



The printscreen shows the clone stamp tool and what difference it has made to the image.

We then brightened the image slightly to make everything stand out more and look brighter.



This printscreen shows how we got the the brightness control tool.

Below is what the final image looks like...



We then wanted to get ride of the background because we knew that we wanted to add the image onto a black background and blend it into the background.



Above shows the tool that we used to get rid of the background easily without having to erase individual parts carefully which would have taken ages to do.

We then opened up a new window that was the correct size of the digipak. We made the background black because we wanted to use reverse colours of the front cover and backcover so instead of using beige as the dominant colour we used black.



Above is a print screen of the tool for the background, you select the colour you want and the paste it on the layer.

We then got a pattern and blended it into the background. Below is a print screen of how we did this.



You change the opacity depending on how blended you want the picture to be.

We then pasted the image of the artist. We cropped it to make it look smaller and we movied it to the other side of the panel. We blended the picture with the background aswell.

This is what our overall first panel had looked like...



However we decided to make the image brighter so we blended it in less to make it stand out more. This is what we finally ended up with...



The 2nd panel is what the cd would be inserted it. Because of this we have decided to keep the panel simple which means we only want to add patterns on the panel.

The background is black again and the patterns we intended on using was from google images and we adapted these patterns to make them our own. Below is a printscreen of what it looks like...



We copied the pattern and pasted it several time and moved them around so it all together looked like one big pattern. This is what it looked like...



We then found a butterfly image on google images that we liked. We wanted to blend this into the middle of the panel.



We opened it up on photoshop on a seperate window and rotated it so it was upright. We also erased the background.



We then pasted it onto the panel and erased the black areas of the butterfly so it was left white. We then blended it into the background again so you could very faintly see it. After this we resized it to fit into the middle.



Finally we had to add the outline of where the cd would go. We just used the shape tool and got 2 circle shapes to outline where the cd would go.

This is what our final 2nd inside panel looks like...



Below is an image of our final digipak panels...



Photoshop Techniques

We have been looking at different websites for photoshop tehniques to hep us design our digipak and magazine advert. We want to make the photos used to look outstanding and different to show that we have an ability of learning new photoshop effects and using them on our work.
Below are website links to the websites we looked at.




The kind of effects that it shows us to do are the following:

- brush effects
- black and white effects
- changing the colours
- making something stand out more
- adding sparkles and glitter effects
- editing texts
- combining images and so on



This effect shows things being added to the photo image. There is also text combines with patterns which in my opinion looks good. I like the purple colour and the different shades and i also like the pose.



This is a before and after effect of a photo of nelly fertado. The photo looks alot more detailed and stands out more.



This effect looks like something we could use as it has a background and also has text infront of the photo. This would be useful for a digipak. However our album is about love and we think this stands out abit too much and does not show that. But we could also adapt this and make it more romantic by adding simplier lighter colours and effects



This effect makes the skin look smoother. A digital camera can make the skin look bumpy and show obvious makeup and powder on the face. This effect can show us how to make the skin appear more smooth. I think this is very useful for our magazine advert and digipak.



This is a before and after photo to show what different the effect has done. It is called a illustration effect thats makes the photo like a cartoon effect. This may not be relevant for us but it is useful to know just incase.





This is a before and after image of an effect that makes the picture look 'hot and fiery'. This is particularly for the male gaze. However in my opinion the picture looks abit too bright for a magazine cover and digipak for out genre.








I particularly like this effect because it makes the photo stand out alot more. It also seems easy to do when looking at the tutorial. It makes the person stand out a lot more and she looks feirce.

Shooting: Thursday 5th November

Location: Yasmin's estate
Time: 4/5pm
On this day we wanted to shoot little things and possibly reshoot some shots we think didn't go that well when looking back at our footage.

Shots that we needed to do:
- Panning across the girls eyes, closeup
- Girl looking out the window, over the shoulder shot, medium shot
- Boys part, last 2 verses, long/ medium shot
- Girl and boy's part singing together, medium shot
- Girl and boy walking holding hands, medium shot
- Girl walking out of estate, long shot
- Boy walking into estate, long shot
- Boy saying 'look outside',medium shot

We managed to get all of the shots that we needed which was good for us.

The boy and girl's costume needed to be the same as other shots we did before so we wore the same outfits. We had equipment such as lighting which was important to have as we were filming in the dark.





Pics for 5th

Photos taken for Digipak and Magazine Advert

For our digipak and album cover we needed to take photos related to our song. We used the main artist who was the girl (me). I wore the same outfit as i did on one of the shoots and was dressed the same way.



I wore makeup that was bright and bold to make my features stand out to the camera.



Her eyes and lips stand out the most, particularly for the 'male gaze'.

There is also evidence for this is..



This is Alicia Dixon, her makeup is also standing out. Her eyes are also smokey and bold and she is wearing lipstick, like me.

I looked at the makeup particularly for these artists because they are british artists that i have looked at previously for artist image research.


Using photoshop i have tried to adapt the pictures to make them suitable to use for our magazine/ digipak. I have use different effects such as black and white.



The picture above is one of the pictures we liked. It was uploaded on photoshop and i tried to make it look different and relate it to our genre. The pose and black and white effect was inspired by beyonce's album cover. However we are aware that we cannot copy this so we made it original by taking the picture from a side view instead of straight ahead. We also made the makeup and accessories coloured as a different effect which we think goes well with our genre.



Below is the original picture that was used.



I uploaded it onto photoshop. I cut the image and pasted it on a magazine sized page as a layer. I then edited the layer and made it black and white. I pasted another layer from the and kept it the same colour. I erased everything apart from the jewellry and accessories. Because there was another layer underneath that was black and white the erased parts showed this.

This was another picture we liked...



The original picture we took was this...



We changed the background of this using photoshop, this is how...

Presentation Picture

This is another picture that we had done, which we liked. The only thing we did here was make it black and white and photoshop. But we particularly like the pose, i am not looking straight at the camera and the camera positioning is good.

We had also experimented with other pictures, but we did nto particularly like them...




We found that this picture above was a good picture, we liked the way it looked. But we feel like it does not represent out genre. It looks more rock type and our genre is RnB so we decided that we cannot use this.



Also with this picture above we do not like the way it turned out overall. Personally i think it looked scary and canot be used for either a digipak cover or magazine advert. But we have learnt from this and are looking to develop this
differently.



This is another picture that i developed using photoshop. I had made the colours dull by changing the hue and saturation but i also added colour the the makeup on the face. This is a similar pose to one of our other pictures but it is a side view pose. We particularly like this pose for the magazine and digipak. However we could maybe change the effects on the photo as they could be seen as too dull for a magazine advert and digipak.

Magazine Advert Flatplan

The following slideshow shows 3 layout ideas for our magazine posters. These are very basic and we intend to develop these further

Flat Plans

Below are drafts of magazine adverts that we have produced. They are very basic as we have only done these to show possible layouts (flatplans) for our magazine. We have also done these to see what the photo's and font would look like if we used them for our magazine advert or digipak. This would help us decide exactly what we dont like and what we do like. From finding out this we can decide if we need to create more fonts or take more pictures.







Shooting: Saturday 31st, Central London

For this shooting we decided to go to Waterloo to film mainly the boy bit rapping. The purpose of this was to go to a Graffiti tunnel near the station which we thought was a good setting for the rapping bit. This was in central London and we managed to get shots that portrayed Britishness such as the Big Ben and London taxi's and even police cars.



Above is a photo of tube delays to show planning as there was tube delays and some lines were closed. To get to our desired location we had to catch a bus instead to waterloo station.
We also went to Nikita's house (our friend) who had a bed with white sheets and we wanted the girl to be lieing on the bed and singing the chorus to the camera.

Shots we needed:
- Boy rapping in graffiti tunnel, Low angle medium shot, long shot
- Boy and girl walking around hugging, long shot
- Boy and girl sitting in Cafe talking to eachother.
- Girl singing chorus lying on bed, medium shot

Costume:

Boy: leather jacket, jeans, trainers, earrings
Girl: Blue dress, Black caridigan, Boots, Earrings, Tights

Shooting