Initial Test shots for the Tilda Allie’s Album cover for her Blue & Red EP. This eventually turned into three covers for each single: Boi, Clear and Taste of your lips. The EP touches on themes of love, loss and finding yourself. We discussed different colour palettes for different moods of the songs. She shared some very personal stories with me about her past relationships. She was a victim of emotional abuse by one of her lovers and this EP was about was about confronting that pain, forgiveness and finding peace with. She wanted to highlight the fact that the man who abused her was a victim of abuse himself and wanted a way to show this concept.
“The only pure way to discover oneself, is through the door opened by others. When we look at ourselves through different glasses we can let go of the ego. We do in order to wake up. In the darkest places you find the brightest light. It’s through the cracks we can see and become free.”
Shots for development of the idea for Bath Boi. These were sent to me to work from. She had a clear vision of how she wanted the cover to look like. The face of the actor. Other than that I had creative freedom to come up with my own concept inspired by the photographs she’d taken.
Initial ideas focusing on the idea of water and the colour palette. Experimenting with 3D fonts for the first time in photoshop. Water as a symbol is about cleansing, renewal, sadness, you can have calm sea and violent sea. Water conjure up a lot of polarising emotions. I showed these initial ideas to Tilda and she wanted something that was less graphic and had more of a surreal quality to it.
Looking for a symbol. The Boy in the bath. I like this concept of a boy floating out to sea, lost and alone. Is he going on a journey back to himself? Is Tilda the water that can rise up at any time and swallow him up?
Memories of being by the sea.
A happy accident
Water colours of the sea – I want to build up different textures to see
Artists work from “La Movida” – avant grade scene that was happening in the 80s in Spain. I liked the collaged effect of the sea.
Set design for an opera that took place in Paris, 1976.
Experimenting with different font ideas. The 3D font with the wave pattern looks great. Tilda really like this one.
Tilda wears a lot of glitter during her performances. I wanted to incorporate this into the artwork in a subtle way. I downloaded a glitter brush and played around with using it as highlight for the waves.
We both agreed this one had too much going on with the background and the yellow font doesn’t capture the right mood.
This is the one she ended up choosing for her first single on the EP. The colour palette and the textures capturing the mood of the song.
She stressed that the second song in the EP was about anger and requested I did a red palette. I felt this was strong but was oversaturated with red. I suggested pink as a background to soften the image and draw more attention to the drawing. Below is the one she ended up choosing.
For the final song, I wanted her to take centre stage – stilll going with the idea of her rising up from the sea as some sort of sea goddess/monster. She has overcome the bullying and the abuse, she rises up to confront him. Play with scale to show how small he is now. She has found strength and resolve to leave him. This led me to think about greek mythology that I had been researching. I wanted it to have a fantastical quality to it. An allegory for love and loss.
Initial sketch made in photoshop using sating overlays to build up the face.
I thought the whole face made of glitter would tie the rest of the single covers together. The glitter we see in the waves is her. She rises up and tells the boy where to go, capsizes his bath boat. She loved this concept and we discussed making a music video with this concept in mind. I wanted to push myself to make something really beautiful and emotional. I want the visuals to capture something eternal. Visuals that are going to be iconic.
