Beecake - The World of Things - Vinyl Album Artwork

To say I am pleased with how this job has turned out is a complete understatement. The colour, the detail the composition of it all worked out just as I had planned. It has to be said that printers aint what they used to be in this country so I have developed many tricks and distortions to work round their arbitrary specifications. In this case all my technical meddling has given me the result I hoped for. Vinyl Album Artwork needs to be pretty high fidelity simply because of the scale of the sleeve. Adding noise, and actually degrading the image helps pull the whole thing together, acting as a kind of glue which binds all the elements and get's round the problems that are inherent in the digital domain. These adjustments are very small and subtle, layered one on top of another to create a kind of textured finish that interacts well with the printing press. Unfortunately most printers are digital these days so in a way what I'm trying to do is emulate the finish and character of a litho print.Beecake are a Glasgow band fronted by actor Billy Boyd of Lord of the Rings fame, the band came to me with a blank sheet giving me free reign to come up with whatever my imagination could muster. In this case it was a robotic humming bird, a matriarchal, organic humming bird and some strange hybrid cyborg offspring. This encompasses many themes, reliance on technology, the deluded concept that somehow this technology will save us from our impending doom. The male robotic humming bird on the cover is out collecting nectar for his family. The Mother tends the nest, trying in vain to feed her chick with a worm, the worm is not enough. The chick needs more... It's older brother/sister simply collects up the flowers, hoarding them, arranging them, coveting them. In the background the filthy, repugnant industry of man belches forth it's noxious fumes. Consuming whatever of nature is left. These cybernetic birds are victims of their environment, they are adapting to the world in which they exist. What will become of them? Will they prevail? Will the earth ever be able to provide them with enough sustenance? Will their ceaseless consumption bring them happiness? Who can say?So the artwork you see here was constructed from many pieces of hand drawn and painted pieces. I have included a few of the original drawings which I scanned and pieced together in the computer. I love doing things by hand it simply creates something far more interesting than working solely in the computer, it's hard to get life and character into the computer and doing things in the real world is great relief for my over saturated digital brain. Yes it does take a lot of time and when you make a mistake there is no cmd Z to undo your mishap. Many an evening was spent on the light box with pencils, pens and paint brushes. I even got the family to help me and the input from my kids was most valuable. If you have kids get them to draw and paint and use their imaginations, it is really quiet amazing what their little minds can come up with and they approach the act of making marks in such varied and exciting ways. Oh to have the mind of a child again.Any way I hope you like the finished result, I put a lot into this one and it has paid off. I am genuinely proud of this. I suggest you go and buy the vinyl, not only does it sound 10 times better than the CD, it is a beautiful, tactile piece of art to savour and enjoy.http://beecake.com/