Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Fever To Tell CD Case

This was the second part of a college project where I had originally illustrated a CD booklet of the album of my choice. I chose Fever to Tell by Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Another tutor in a different class decides to link up with the booklet project and gave us a brief that instructed the class to create the packaging/casing for the booklet. I made a sleeve style cover for the album influenced by the art work I had already created. The CD itself slots into one side, the booklet into another.

I kept the design on the outer cover black and white to contrast with the vibrant colours of the booklet inside. I created the design for the cover using by cutting into black card and scanning the results in to be printed off. I then wrapped the print off around my card template for the case. The general shapes and forms were in keeping with the ones I had drawn for the booklet, so that the musical style as well as illustrative style was still reflected.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Fever To Tell Booklet: Part 2

These are the other six pages in my Yeah Yeah Yeahs Fever to Tell CD booklet which I made as part of a second year college drawing project. Click here to see the first part of my booklet.

7. Pin – Pro markers and drawing pen.

8. Cold Light – Photocopy, drawing pen, colouring pencil and pro markers.

9. No No No – Oil pastel. Etching

10. Maps – Pro markers and drawing pen.

11. Y Control – Pro markers, coloured paper and drawing pen. Collage.

12. Modern Romance – Colouring pencil, pro markers and drawing pen. Collage

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Fever To Tell Booklet: Part 1

This was a second year college project for a drawing class. We got to pick an album that we liked and use drawing to create the CD booklet for the album. I chose Yeah Yeah Yeahs album Fever To Tell. We could interpret this however we wanted i.e. illustrate the style of music, or the lyrics, or the message or the sound. Whatever way it inspired us.

I decided I wanted to combine a lot of these elements. I drew what I saw when I listened to songs, I took inspiration from single words as well as lyrics, I was heavily influenced by the musical patterns and spikey guitar riffs. I tried to convey this the best I could. I was also partially inspired by the actual album artwork in that I wanted it to be a multimedia piece.

1. Rich – Drawing pens, pro markers and oil pastel. Collage.

2. Date With the Night – Coloured paper, black sugar paper and drawing pen. Collage.

3. Man – Pro markers.

4. Tick – Oil Pastel. Etching.

5. Black Tongue – Colouring pencils, pro markers, drawing pens and coloured paper. Collage

6. Band Picture – Paper and photoshop. Collage.

I wanted to retain the handmade look so I did not try to cover up any specks, smudges or marker lines in Photoshop. I think it adds to the indie nature of the band and they have even used fan art in their subsequent album covers so I know this is something that could suit the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Animal Emotions – Activity Pack Cover

Apologies for the crappy images. For some reason, I never took any photos of it college with the proper set up so this is a quick bedroom floor job I’m afraid. Buy anyway, this is the outside cover of my childrens activity pack that contains all the activity sheets I designed inside. The sheets on the inside were printed on matte paper as this is easier for children to draw, write or colour on. The pack cover was printed on a thick high gloss so it was more sturdy and appropriate as a cover.

This is the reverse of the outside cover. It simply show the contents of the pack and a ‘barcode’ to show how it would look if it was an actual product.

The circular flap on the edge of the activity pack layout above and below show where the pack folds to hold the sheets themselves .I decided to add another layer to the activity aspect by having two puzzle type questions about the picture of the tiger on the inside cover below.

You can see these activity sheet inserts for the pack above by clicking here and here. They include a fortune teller making activity, colouring in, puzzles and facts.

Animal Emotions – Activity Pack Contents

This is another one of the sheets that I included in my activity pack. I researched current packs on the market and there are usually a few recurring elements. For example, you might have a make and do aspect (the fortune tellers in this case), a puzzle, colouring in and something educational. I wanted my pack to be an all rounder to I tried to cover all these elements. I was lucky that could fit the different characters into each different activity. So above you can see the ‘silly’ tiger is the character on the  puzzle page which happens to be a maze.

This was the colouring in activity sheet. I wanted to create a pack of crayons to match this section of the project but unfortunately with the time constraints it wasn’t possible. Here I got to reuse the ferocious tiger character already in the fortune teller.

This was the educational side to the activity pack with a few simple facts about tigers for children to read. Again, it was handy how the wise tiger character fit in to this part of the project without having to be shoe-horned in as he really suits the theme.

I decided to mix up the colours with the other parts of the activity pack to avoid being too repetitive. However, if I had chose to make more fact sheets or educational elements, I would have kept them yellow. Likewise if I had created more colouring in pages, they would have been purple, just to keep like with like and keep everything organised and colour coded.

As the activity pack I created only focused on one animal, I imagined that if the pack was an actual product, that you could also purchase other activity packs based on the other animals. So to hint at the fact that I had considered this, I included a faux promotional sheet to encourage the consumer to purchase the other activity packs in the series.

Animal Emotions – Fortune Teller Activity Sheets

The next phase in this college project was to introduce what we had made into a broader platform. I decided, as I had made a childs paper toy, that I wanted to make an activity pack for it. I remember getting little activity packs as a child that would come with puzzles, colouring books and crayons. My aim aim was to create something to that effect in keeping with the style I had created.

The above images show some of the inserts in the activity pack I made. You have the page for fortune teller itself so that a child can cut it out and make. You have a folding instructions page too with visual aids so that a child would be able to make sure they were making it properly. Then finally, there are instructions how to play the little game itself.

I did make some more inserts for the activity pack which I will post soon. I kept all the pages blue because they go together in sequence whereas the other pages I created where stand alone pages. I continued to use coloured paper for texture so that everything was consistent in theme and look.

Animal Emotions – Fortune Tellers

These are some images I took of my ‘fortune’ tellers from a college project called Animal Emotions. See more on the three separate pieces I created here, here and here.

Animal Emotions – Zebra

My third and final animal that I chose to illustrate was a zebra. In hindsight, I’m not sure it was the wisest selection because it’s not as colourful as the other animals I made. But ah well! That’s nature! Can’t go raggin’ on zebras now. And I guess I did make up the colours of the ostrich too. Hmmm. Scratch all of that. The zebra stays. Probably the most famous animal of the alphabet. See – it keeps with the kids theme as well haha.

So above we have a shocked zebra, a sleepy zebra, an in love zebra and a weird zebra. Instead of using a more familiar type of stripe, I collected photos of patterns in my room. I took a photo of a houndstooth patterned jumper I had and printed off a few images. I could then use that as a paper layer in my zebra collages. This was a good idea before I even knew it, because the characters were made before they were put into a fortune teller format. If I had gone with more traditional stripes, it would be too hard to distinguish between the tiger teller and the zebra teller. So luckily I had a new pattern.

As you can see, the pattern in the outer corners gives the zebra character his own separate identity. Unfortunately, I have no photos of the zebra ‘fortune’ teller showing the inner part, but I do have some shots of the outside and how you use them. This is for anyone who has never seen one of these doodahs in action!

Animal Emotions – Tiger

These are the second round of characters I had to make for my college project. I chose the tiger because it’s one of my favourite animals and also I thought it would be something I would enjoy illustrating. I think people who can draw can manage things like cats or dogs quite easily because they’ve probably been drawing them in fridge pictures since they were little. Hence my choosing a tiger! So above we have the ferocious tiger, silly tiger, sick tiger and wise tiger. I think the poor green sick tiger is my favourite one of he four. I feel sorry for a piece of paper!

I drew the stripes on rather than use paper. Mostly to save time and effort. But also because regular black paper is hard to come by. It’s usually sugar paper or card and all that would stand out to much against the thinner coloured paper I’d been using elsewhere. So out came the trusty black permanent marker.

If you have seen the previous ostrich post you’ll know I kept to pretty much the same child-aimed colour scheme and layout. In the outer corners we have tiger stripes to denote the animal inside. My little sisters had great fun playing with the ‘fortune’ tellers so I’ll take it as a successful outcome!

Animal Emotions – Ostrich

These images are from a college project entitled Animal Emotions. The brief entailed taking a trip to the zoo to photograph and observe animals. When our research was collected we were then informed that we would be illustrating three of these animals and projecting four different human emotions onto them. The first animal I chose was an ostrich as I had a lot of material to work from in my notebook.

I decided to use paper collage to animate the animals. Every now and then I tried to get away from working on the computer in college. So these are the final four images I chose. I handmade every detail with colored paper, glue and a scalpel. I touched up some of the images with Photoshop to get rid of things like glue stains and tears in the paper.

The next part of the brief was to incorporate the animals illustration into some other sort of media. So some people made posters, flashcards and books. I chose a childs fortune teller. The style I had portrayed my animals was quite child like and tangible so I wanted to make a physical moveable piece that a child would like to play with.

The pattern on the outer corners was taken from the scalloped pattern on the ostriches body. A curvy rounded font was selected to make it look playful and child friendly. So the aim was that any child could print this off and fold it up themselves to play a game with it. Some people might remember making these with copybook paper in school.