Album Cover

I tried to make a tongue in cheek emo album cover, with a moody, pretentious look. I started out with this image i took of myself.

I then used Photoshop, with the text tool, and primarily the Burn and Dodge tools, which make the image darker or lighter. I also changed the Hue so it appeared more monochrome, and made my blue eyes and grey shirt green.

Overall, I'm really quite proud of this. I think it's suitably moody, and the eyes and t-shirt are really striking.

In this version, the darkness around the face is less patchy, and the t-shirt and background are lighter, and the eyes have been darkened. I really like the background, but i don't think it's quite as atmospheric as the former.

Here is my final concept. Using the burn tool, it is the darkest of them all, but still with the background that i like. In a way it almost looks quite cartoon-ish. But now I'm torn between this one and the first as I'm not sure which one i want to use, this or the first one. The first one seems too simple but this one seems more complex than what i was trying to achieve.

Here are some concept designs i quickly drew for the back cover.

But images of dictionarys are harder to find than what i first anticipated.

Here is my actual design. It's some badly photoshopped fire on a bunch of books. The background looks terrible though and will definatly need a re-do, and the fire needs to be blended in better, but i like the conecpt, as it links to the theme of lexical gaps quite well.