Live Brief: Basement Jaxx Single Cover

This is my submission for a live competition hosted by both Basement Jaxx and JDO which was to create a single cover for one of their songs. We had to first choose and theme and then a song, and I chose “Everything Is Connected” and “We R Not Alone”.

 This project really made me think outside of the box and cross boundaries because I allowed myself to think weird ideas. Like here I thought: what if the Earth wasn’t orbiting the sun on its own, but had a UFO to carry it around? And this was the result!

The Process
I started the project by drawing down some sketches that popped into mind when looking at the brief and after watching some of Basement Jaxx's music videos.

I wanted to do something a bit more crazy so I drew up a mind map of anything and everything I could think of, no matter how unrealistic it was. I then sketched done some more ideas that I thought were stronger than my initial ones and continued to develop them.

I finally settled on one idea which was to draw a UFO hovering over Planet Earth, so after picking a sketch I decided to draw it to size and came up with two versions.

After much deliberation I chose to pick the one where the strings were coming off from the UFO so that it looked as if the UFO was carrying Earth.

With the idea now done I decided to create a mood board to get some inspiration on how I am going to paint the space around Planet Earth, the UFO and the moon.

Image sources: http://bcpa.creativeblogs.net/2013/05/21/exciting-facts-about-space/ http://blog.insureandaway.co.uk/space-tourism-book-your-flights-now/ http://aloneinspace.deviantart.com/art/Space-344305078 http://istebrak.deviantart.com/art/Space-Art-Commission-376660919 http://bloknayrb.deviantart.com/art/Sea-of-Stars-252740902 http://g00diegumdrops.deviantart.com/art/Majesty-334927638 http://robertprinsen.deviantart.com/art/Homam-198031166 http://taicarmen.wordpress.com/2011/05/23/stardust-contemplating-stardust-inner-space-and-the-science-of-illumination/ http://www.wallsank.com/wallpaper/space-2.html http://foundwalls.com/space-stars-galaxy-universe-andromeda-nebula/ http://loadpaper.com/id6023/2011-04-pla-space-stars-galaxy-digital-1920x1200-wallpaper-1920x1200-pixel.html 

I want to my illustration for the cover to be quite dramatic and tapping into that sense of fantasy, so I focused on the images that portrayed beautiful colours in space rather than just a black abyss. While I was looking at them I thought of the many ways I could achieve this effect, and finally decided on watercolour paint.

Because of this I transferred the sketch over onto watercolour paper as the paint would ruin "normal" paper and create bumps.

Now it was time to paint, but first I needed to apply a mask over the UFO so that it remained untouched by the watercolour. I would then peel it off when the paint was dry.

Once everything was painted I used red pen to draw the strings, and then I brought it up on Photoshop to tweak the colours slightly and add the logo and type. And voila!