Space Boo : The Process
My very good friend, Steve, the one who makes the images for the poems on my blog, dabbles in music production.
One of his first pieces was a work named Space Boo. It was just an experimental piece that he sent me to hear. It was unnamed and he didn't seem to have any plans on naming it.
I heard the ambient three-minute track and like I do with a lot of lyricless music, I imagine and think of what the music reminds me of. I excitedly told him that the track made me feel
like I was floating in space.
He seemed very happy upon hearing that and he then proceeded to tell me that on his music production app, there were some sounds under the label of "space" which he used to make this sweet little track. Soon we started to think of names for the track and we soon settled on "Space Boo". Although there's no lyrics or story in this music, the name of the song gives me "meeting someone from outer space" vibes.
He quickly posted it to SoundCloud (you can hear it through the little box on the bottom right corner) and put a screenshot from Minecraft, which both of us play sometimes, as the cover. I offered to make a cover for him since I was an artist and I enjoyed drawing. I also never made a cover for a single before so I was very excited to work on it.
I first started by looking for ideas for the space-themed track by looking for images of space and astronauts on Pinterest. I made a board especially for it to contain possible concepts.
Then I went on to draw concept sketches for the cover. I drew three concepts, which you can see below:
I showed this to Steve and I told him that I personally like the third concept sketch the most. He liked it too and we chose the third sketch to represent the track. Here is a closer look at the sketch below:
As you can see, I drew an alien there. I know she looks very much human, but if you look closer, she has marks on her face, and the tip of her ear is pointed. I started working on the cover as soon as I could.
I first worked on the background which was going to be a galaxy. I never painted a galaxy before, neither traditional nor digital. I looked up some tutorials but they were of little help. I ended up taking a reference and painting according to it. The tutorials only helped me get to know what brushes to use. After a lot of experimenting with layer opacities, colors, and brushes I came to the final result. Like every other artist, I had pretty high expectations as to how it should come out, and while the end result looks great I still felt that it could have been better. But since it was my first time, I went easy on myself.
Next, I started to work on the alien girl. I resized the photo of the concept sketch and made it so that there would be enough space for the song name, artist, and for the galaxy to be comfortably visible. I then started to outline the sketch and then add in the little details to her hair and her jacket.
Then I copy to sketch and paste it on top of the Galaxy to see how it looked. I also made the sketch white so that it pops on the galaxy background. I was planning on colouring the alien girl but when I saw how nice she looked in white, I decided against it. I asked Steve what he thought and he too felt like it looked good just as it was.
I then decided to experiment again. I wanted a glow around the outline of the alien girl which would make her look like an otherworldly being. I used an airbrush in white and went around the outline and then lowered the opacity of the glow. It looks so beautiful! When Steve saw, it he favored the glow more.
When that was settled, we decided on the font of the song name and artist name. It didn't take long to decide that and before we knew it, the cover for Space Boo was completed.
Are you enjoy the process of making this cover. The experimentation was my favourite part of the whole process. Steve liked the cover very much and asked me to design the covers for his future singles as well.
Thank you all for reading and coming along with me to see the process of the cover! I hope you liked it. If you did, please share it with your contacts, and don't forget to leave a comment down below. Your love through the comments really motivates me and I would really love to know what you guys think! Thank you always for your constant support.
See you in the next,
Arnica
Nice👌👌
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