Another day just me being bored. So I thought why not create a random album for a band that does not exist? Going through websites to give me the words and what I need to make it weird and not make sense. To create something to laugh at or regret later on.
This probably would not be its name nor its colors. But here in this visual assignment, I utilized randomizer generators to gather a Band Name, Album Title, and Album Artwork. I put them all together and here’s what I got!
This is my submission to the create An Album Cover visual assignment found on the ds106 site. This assignments difficulty is rated 3 out of 5 stars.
I chose to do this assignment because it has quite a unique structure which I liked. To complete the process of making an album cover the assignment gave us a set of instructions which had to be followed. The requirement for this assignment was to create an album cover using a provided band name, title of album and album cover picture. Although everybody has the same instructions for this assignment what makes it unique is the way we acquire the name of the band, the title of the album and the album cover. In this assignment we could make the cover on any software from Microsoft Paint to Photoshop. I would not have done this assignment if I had to use Microsoft Paint I have used Photoshop because I can create something to a certain quality I’m proud to make and publish for others to see.
I have also hyper-linked the correct pages if people want to try this assignment out for themselves, you can follow the process and steps I have done below.
My band name is called ‘Fever Crumb Series’ so to come up with the name of your band you have to click this random wiki link and whatever the title of the Wikipedia page is now your band name. 
Now to find out what the title of the album is called you have find a quote from this page, scroll down to the bottom of the page and take the last 4 to 5 words off of the end of the last quote. The title of my album is called ‘Neither Liberty Nor Safety’ as these were the end words of the quote I had to choose.
The last step was to find an album cover picture. To do this we were sent to over to a page on Flickr and from there you have to use the third picture along. The picture I had to use was a mountain range which I was actually rather happy with compared to some of the other pictures I could have been given.
After I got my band name, album title and the album cover picture I had to merge them all together to create the album cover in whatever creative way I like. The reason I decided to use Photoshop to create my album cover because I want it at the best quality I can get and it allows more ways to be creative with the vast range of tools and effects. In Photoshop the main thing I did was sized the image to make it square like an album cover and edit the text. I made the text colour similar to the general colour of the mountains and to make it stand out so it didn’t blend into the mountain I added the drop shadow effect to the text. The drop shadow allows the text to be read easily as well as being able to stick with the colour theme. I edited the picture of the mountains by adding ‘noise’ to it. The reason I added noise to it is because it’s a very sharp image and the noise softens it a bit so it makes the text fit and blend in more so they don’t look separate.
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I remember seeing this forum game years ago where you’d get some a band name from the title of a Wikipedia article, an album title from the last few words from a random quote on a quotes website, and an album coverfrom the popular images on an image hosting site. You’d put them all together to get a randomly-generated album. While flipping through the Assignment Bank, I spotted a version of this using Wikipedia, Quotations Page, and Flickr. I decided to click the links and see what I’d get:
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
– Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 1865)
I threw them all together using Inkscape to get this cool album cover:
I think it actually turned out pretty well! To go a little farther, I decided to use the random quotes from Quotations Page to get me a list of songs that’d be on this album:
Tools used:
An Album Cover – Manipulate the picture, resize it, add some other color, whatever. Do the same with the band name and album title, put them over top. However you wanna do it. Make it look cool.
http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/an-album-cover/
I love music, so picking this assignment was a no brainer. So this assignment was cool for me because there is some digital learning here, with all the different methods used to create this work, and there is also storytelling here. I see this and the first thing I see is this ripply wave picture that’s covered with a shroud of mysticism. Then I see this super long band name that looks like a mental disorder but is in fact a plant. Lastly I see this super mysterious and slightly paradoxical album name of “Know What Can’t Be Done”. Like wow. Let me go buy this immediately and listen to what they have to say. There’s also a part of it that makes me wonder, what kind of music is it? Is it a boy or a girl band or both? This was also easier to create than I thought AND it was fun to see what I randomly got assigned by the random selector thingy. Luckily for me, each piece came together to fit into one large puzzle.
This album cover made itself using the forces of randomosity and guidance from DS106 assignment bank
Step 1: Random Wikipedia Page Generator sends me to a pharmaceutical company focusing on Cannabis. Good start! Hortapharm B.V. is formed!
Step 2: Album name comes from a few words of the last quote on whatever page this link takes you to. This just happened to be a quote from Lady Gaga. I took the last 5 words: “Sequins Represent a Good Time“. Certainly couldn’t do any better with my own imagination.
Step 3: Get picture for album cover from an interesting Flickr page. Supposed to pick the 3rd one, but I took the 4th. Because it was weird enough for a weird band. Done. Created. I can hear it already.
I found this visual assignment very fun, however challenging at the same time. This assignment required me to develop my own band’s album cover. If you are interested here is the original link to the assignment. First I had to visit a randomly chosen Wikipedia page which would be the name of my band. So, this was the Wikipedia page that was displayed. I thought this would be a great name for my band because Mount Lied is a mountain in Antarctica, relating to the idea that my band is big, strong, and can whether harsh times. Now that I have the awesome name of my band, the next step was to click on a link that would take me to a page full of random quotes and of the last quote on that page I was to use the last five or six words to create the title of my new album. This is the random page of quotes that appeared for me, leading my title to be “Show the world what makes you extraordinary”. I believe this is a great title that connects to my band’s name because it is inspirational, drawing the buyer/possible listener in and making them feel empowered and strong, just as a mountain and proving that they also have extraordinary qualities to show the world. The last step to complete my album cover was to click a link that took me to a random flickr page and I was to pick the third image, which would be the picture for my album cover. Amazingly, the third picture on my randomly chosen flickr page was of mountains. This photo matched my band’s name and the quote perfectly. I decided to keep the picture in the original color, adding in my band’s title in bold at the top, stating to the reader/buyer that this is the band and we are a mountain and we are strong. Then underneath across the mountain, adding the title of the album in a wave form with …. Which to me seems to leave the rest up to the listener to finish how they feel they make the world extraordinary.
I originally chose to complete this visual assignment because it seemed interesting, leading me to think how could three randomly chosen links form together to create an overall message and provide the buyer a story or certain type of feeling. So, I decided to give it a try. To my surprise, this assignment was able to create a great band album cover that could instill peace, encouragement, and inspiration to its listeners. It amazes me that a simple photo cover with the right words and message provided by the computer generated visual could create these feelings for the buyers. By completing this visual assignment, it has proven to me that with the help of computers and photos we are able to create a story with just one picture and a few words.
The Mount Lied Album Cover:
For this assignment, we were given a random Wikipedia article, a page of random quotes, and a random flickr image. We needed to combine these things into an album cover. Here’s my result. The article name, which is supposed to be the band name, is in the lower left corner. I just felt that was a good spot to show the artist without being in the way. Though I admit I could have used a better color. And with a name like Ceratostigma willmottianum I felt like some kind of fancy looking font was necessary. Lets face it, you’ll have to read that name several times no matter how it looks. The end of my random quote ended up being “Where’s it all going to end?” A nice, abstract name for an album. I put it in the middle in big bold letters to really emphasize the bombastic nature of the quote. The image I feel works pretty well with it. Seems like a nice place where it would all end. Or, if you’re more creative, a nice place to ask that kind of question in your head. I like music, and the art that comes with albums, so I thought this would be a pretty good assignment for me.
So I took the image I was given and opened it in my favorite program Microsoft Paint. It took me a few tries to find one where the owner allowed downloads. I had to resize the image a bit since the initial one was pretty big. Then I used the text tools to write out the phrases. Then I just selected appropriate fonts and colors for them, and tried to place them in spots where I felt they looked best. That’s pretty much it.
I had to create an album cover for a make-believe band. I followed these instructions.
The assignment required little or no skill, and suggested that we copy images that had copyright licenses. I followed the instructions because I’d rather to go to jail than not do this assignment as specified. I opened up the image in Microsoft Paint, then added the band-name and album-name.
You can imagine there being a couple of garden gnomes partying inside that shed. Fifi, their leader, recently brought back a trout from the sea to share with them. One of the gnomes discovers that trout, when placed in milk, tastes even more delicious.
This album explores the more whimsical side of Fifi and the Flowertots. Their previous album, The Fall of DS106, was a bit more serious, although still fan-favored. On that CD was the single, “Gone with the Wahl”, which had charted the top 10 during its opening week.
One of the visual assignments I chose to complete this week was the album cover assignment. The assignment is worth 3 stars. Here are the instructions for the assignment:
So here’s something fun for everyone to do, should be quick and easy, but try to make it pretty. First, go here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random The title of the article is now the name of your band. Next, go here:
http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 Go to the bottom of the page. The last four to five words of the last quote are the title of your first album Lastly, go here:
http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days Select the 3rd image. It is the picture for your album cover. Manipulate the picture, resize it, add some other color, whatever. Do the same with the band name and album title, put them over top. However you wanna do it. Make it look cool.
This is a link to the assignment page, if you want to take a look.
The title of the Wikipedia article I was directed to was “Montenegrin Navy.” The random quote I got was “Forsake not an old friend; for the new is not comparable to him: a new friend is as new wine; when it is old, thou shalt drink it with pleasure.” I was pleased to see that the three parts I drew actually worked well together. Album art of a shark matched up very well with the band name Montenegrin Navy and the bible quote was appropriately strange (out of context, anyway).
Here’s what I put together:
I used GIMP to create this image. I started by making a duplicate of the original, colored image. Using directions I found here, I selectively colored the eye. I had to zoom in to 800% and use a 1-pixel brush to get the border right. When I zoomed back out, I decided that I wanted a bit more color, so I decided to color the mouth as well. I started off with a large brush and filled in most of the center before going back with a much smaller brush to get the borders. Most of the teeth were a blue color, so I used the Color Picker Tool to copy the color of one of the whiter teeth and then brushed over the other teeth with it. There’s still a decent amount of blue, but it definitely looks better than it did. With the cover art complete, I used the Text Tool to add the band name to the top right corner. I chose to color the text red because I wanted something that would pop out of the gray color of the background. Sharks and the color red also just go together so well. Next, I worked on the album title. I added the text first. Then, I used these instructions to make the bubble around the text. I merged the text layer down into the bubble layer and edited the border to make it black. The original image of the shark was rectangular, so I used the Crop Tool to cut it down to a square and then exported it as a JPEG image.
Overall, I’m happy with what I was able to do. I realize now that I had the text bubble start a little to the left of where it should. The eye and the left side of the mouth turned out well, I think, but the right side of the mouth was much more difficult and you can see where I had trouble. I tried to go back to convert some of that portion back to grayscale, but that was harder than I expected and I ended up just moving on. I figure that each of these assignments should help me get better with these tools, but that doesn’t mean that they need to be perfect. I’ll be doing the “Splash That Color” assignment next and I think that I’ll be able to do a better job with that now that I know how difficult it is to go back to correct mistakes.
I forgot to grab screenshots of my work as I went, but I’ll be sure to do that for the next two assignments I complete.
