Something a little different compared to our normal fare. Some time back a friend asked me to design a CD cover for their band, The Blues Spiders. They wanted a design that featured all four band members, in a style that I’m pretty happy doing – cartoony / comic book.
I sketched the work up on Clip Studio Paint EX. Normally I would use Sketchbook Pro, but as I knew I would be rendering the final artwork in CSP I decided to all of it in there. The first iteration was more of a comic book style, with a ‘likeness’ approach. After some feedback we decided to go further into a stylised version, similar to the cover for Blur’s ‘Best Of’ album. I also split it into four panels and styled the logo to drop through the middle. Although they already had a logo, we re-worked it for this CD and I noticed that they adopted the typography in later works. The font is Sinzano by Ray Larabie, inspired by jazz club asthetic. Not the blues, but it works well for that too.
It was important to show each band member with their instrument, at least in part. Above shows the first iteration, with the progress on the new version with added colour. I used the zippertone materials in CSP, overlaying to adopt the colours underneath to get the comic book / print effect
Final artwork
I was pretty pleased with how this turned out!
