My character and album cover design for Andy Mallen's new album "Video Boy" went through several iterations. Originally, the cover was to feature technology items like cameras and film strips, but this idea did not work out. The final design features the character Video Boy standing on a platform overlooking beams of light and streaks covering the front and back of the album in shades of blue. Video Boy's design was inspired by an iPod toy and paper craft styles. The font uses basic shapes arranged simply but understandably to spell out the title. While not exactly as envisioned, the finished album captures the key elements of the character overlooking light-filled chaos across the cover.

1. Album cover final evaluation
For Production we were told to come up with both a character and an album cover for the purpose
of Andy Mallen (M.boy) and his new album titled “Video boy”. My original design was to have the
cover themed after various pieces of technology which related to media such as cameras, film strips
and video cassettes. Sadly this idea didn’t work out and as a result of this I had to redesign my album
to accommodate a much easier album design to produce which still seemed appealing to look at.
My started off by looking at the basics for my production which included the standard colour scheme
for the album cover. I chose to work with black and blues as this had an interesting look about it as
well as the two colours going rather well together I thought. I then set about coming up with various
appealing images for the album cover which would relate to the idea behind the cover design and
colour scheme. I went with the idea of having projected and refracted beams of light as they had a
rather appealing look about them which I thought would work with the colour scheme. The beams of
light also were at a right angle which allowed for me to position them to go across the bottom of the
cover and up the side of it also. I then decided to include minor aspects such as the platform that
Video boy stands on as well as the back cover and the font for the songs listed on the back. I kept
with the idea of having blue as the main iconic colour for the album but used various shades that
made it easier for the viewers to read the song names.
I then set about designing the character for my album cover. Naturally
I chose to stick with the name Video boy but I also chose do design a
specific logo for Video boy. I also set about researching various designs
for the character. I looked into a number of
designs for the body but eventually went
with two specific styles. For the body
shape I went for a similar look to
RavonRebot which is an Ipod toy
accessory, and I looked into Shin Tanaka
paper craft for the style of clothing that I
used for my characters.
At first I was unsure how I was going to place Video boy into my album
design but I eventually decided to work with the idea of having Video boy placed on a stand in the
back ground looking over the various album titles that cover the front of the album.
For the font I chose to have is very simple and consists of basic shapes but
laid out in a design so that they can be understand (For example the triangle
at the front is obviously a “V” due to its place in the title). I then decided to
have the title scattered across the album cover on both the front and the
back in order to give it a more creative feel.
The final job was to put all the work together and actually produce the final
album. The look of it I have to admit wasn’t quite what I expected it to be as
most of the images used were either too difficult to edit properly or they were too much for the
programme to handle. I eventually settled for the basic design of having my character standing on a
platform watching over the catastrophe of light beams, lightning and light streaks which cover both
sides of the album.