11 Nov - Finished Product

Today, I have finally finished my CD Cover. The CD Cover looks like this:

It looks really nice in my opinion, and I think I did a great job. here are the links to the pictures i have used in it:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/CD_logo.png

http://www.clker.com/cliparts/i/w/5/M/Y/x/cartoon-stone-hi.png

http://www.how-to-draw-cartoons-online.com/image-files/cartoon_fire.gif

http://derekbeaulieu.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/textfestival-barcode-1.jpg

14 Nov - Logo and Tracklist Making

I have experimented with different things today, for example the Mosaic Tool and the Spot Heal tool in Photoshop. However, many of these didn't work so I delete them. The other work I've done on this is put the logo on, put the barcode on, and also the tracklist is starting to come together. Here is a photo of what I have done today:

12 Nov - Finishing the Logo

Today, I have finished my logo for my band. I learned how to transfer a bitmap graphic and turn it into a vector graphic. Here are the two different bitmap images that I first used:

I then afterwards traced these out on Adobe Illustrator, which then resulted in these images:

I then put this onto xara, and constructed my logo. First of all, I filled in the fire picture so that it contains color inside. Then, I put the stone into the middle of the fireball. Lastly, I added my band name at the bottom of my logo which then creates this: 

8 Nov - Making a Band Logo

Today, we started to enquire on making our band logos. First of all, I create a XARA file which contained some information about logos that I really liked. Here is the file:

I talk about logos which were unique, and some which are my favorite. Also, I started to work on my logo as well. Here is the concept - Since my band name is Stone on fire, it will be a Stone which has been set on fire. On the stone, i will have a drum kit on it. Then, I will put the band name on the bottom. However, I only have just created the stone in XARA today so there is nothing I can show today.

4th Nov - Touching up the Band Photo

Today, I touched up my band photo with the Background Eraser Tool. Here is a screenshot of what I did today:

Because of the fact that when using the selection tool in Photoshop to extract pictures, it sometimes leaves a border around the photo, I had to manually remove most of the white pixels around the desired areas of the photo. This is a zoomed-in part that I am working on. Some of the white pixels have been removed, but there are still some. I work with 1px on my eraser tool, because it provides me with the pinpoint accuracy I need. After I am done with the background eraser tool, I will have finished with the front part of my CD cover. Here is what the whole thing looks like now: 

Although when people look at the CD cover, it will only appear as a small line around the picture, this is not what I want as I do not want any white pixels around my picture at all. Next lesson, after I finished with the eraser tool, I will work on making the logo.

1 Nov - Continuing my CD cover design

Today I added in some extra details into my CD cover, such as an extra border in the middle for CD case. This is the background i used for that:
http://wallpoper.com/images/00/45/10/12/black-background-metal_00451012.jpg

Here is a preview of my CD cover. So far I'm doing pretty well! I decided to keep the same background for both sides of my CD cover, because then I would be able to give the same effect I want the user/audience to feel when they look at my CD cover - which is cool. I also learnt today how to rotate and edit text in Photoshop from these Yahoo Answer Links at the bottom. They really helped me quite a bit!

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101008122718AAIYlXO
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070615113744AAQmaAV

The reason why I did not add in my band photo yet, is because I have trouble extracting me and my band members without anything else. Here is what I get, but for some reason photoshop forces me to add in some color in the background as well, instead of no fill. I will try to find a workaround for this, but for now this is what I am stuck with:

Maybe next lesson, I will be able to fix this!

Oct 31 - CD cover construction

Today, we started to work on our CD Covers. I have been experimenting with different types of backgrounds, which all have a common theme i already chose, which is a fire burning on a black background. I'm currently working on finding some cool backgrounds for it, and here are some pictures that I have experimented with: