A different operation mode was required for the work on Walter Ehresman’s cover for the The A.D.G. Project album released on Petcord today, because it was based on photos that were used for the previous cover of the CD release. In theory, it would have been possible to create an entirely new artwork, but I wanted to take the challenge of improving the existing material, because it forced me to work with colours haven’t used too often yet. Additionally, to make matters more complex, the images were of a rather low resolution.

Therefore I opted to make them appear like blurry highlights, which also resembles the method Walter Ehresman used to create a dense sonic ambience for the solo string instuments he used. I expanded the colour scheme to the back and couldn’t help play with ratios one more time, though not necessarily based on the Golden Ratio as my previous work. The idea to this cover came into existence pretty fast with little need for modifications. I like the typography and how I wasn’t too overwhelmed by the motif (sometimes quite a difficult task, if it is too dominating).

The work on Through A Glass Darkly’s cover for the Petcord album Luminal was pretty straight forward, as it fell into a rather creative phase of mine. There were two drafts. Both had their pros and cons, however it was the synthesis between that turned the cover into a winner. A prominent feature of the cover is the repetition of certain ratios which somehow matches to the fractal nature of the original artwork. It also takes a different approach how to integrate an already existing artwork into a cover draft, by not just displaying the work as a whole, but using it as some kind of raw material.

In any case, the cover pretty much reflects the character of the music and is certainly one of the better ideas I had so far. Whether I’m going to continue this style remains to be seen as I’ve been missing some purely graphic elements for a while and expect them to become more prominent in future covers.

João Clemente’s album Ipupiara for Petcord has a story of its own: It had the very unfortunate fate of somehow slipping through the cracks in the midst of a sea of trouble, which led to a longer than usual period between submission and actual release. Additionally, it was difficult to reach the artist since he has no Internet connection readily available. Given the circumstances, we tried our best to come close to a suitable cover design and Petcord, for the first time in its existence, had to take the risk of using a cover the artist may not even know of. Perhaps this led to a fail safe approach without too many experiments.

The cover is based on a photography I took a couple of years ago and was inspired by an alternative but rejected draft of an earlier Petcord release. Several drafts were tried and errored and even though Marco could not find fault with any of those, it was me who wasn’t too happy. I could not even name the actual issue, just that I felt it did not match to the music and appeared like a half-hearted attempt at creating a cover. Luckily, I remember that old draft and used it as a base for this album and modified minor aspects like colouring or its typography.

Returning from its hiatus, Synflict came up with some artwork for one of the Petcord releases that fell prey to a chain of events that led to weeks of inactivity. At first glance, one may think that working with a lot of pressure, knowing that something has got to be done to prevent serious damage and disappointed and frustrated artists, is sure way to get to rather uninspired, at most mediocre results. Fortunately, this was not the case with Paolino Canzoneri’s album i giorni del dimagrimento released on Petcord today. Perhaps this was due to Paolino giving us free reign about the design after having reviewed some of our works (of cause we are always happy if someone likes our graphic output).

The music has clear and distinct structures. Hard opposites colliding at each other without any blurry or ambiguous structures inbetween. Additionally, the music is somewhat lively and powerful, quite the opposite of the rather sombre and sometimes tension ridden tone the average Petcord release is known for. This kind of architecture reminded me of Futuristic paintings and that was the starting point for the main motif. It is based on an old photography of electricity pylons which saw a secret mixture of processing with The Gimp. So in the end, a cover came into existence that pretty much reflects what can be heard on the album.

Result: Both the artist and we are happy about the result :-).

Those were rather difficult weeks… They were characterised by a marked lack of time, frustration about crumbling relationships, people once considered friends and some kind of burnt-out syndrome. Some opted to silently disappear from my horizon, hoping not to be confronted with inconvenient questions, or simply forgot about my existence. Others may simply found me no longer amusing and turned to others lining up on their virtual contacts queue. Be it as it may, in situations like this, you wind up with incomplete work piling up and inquiries about your progress, where you have to explain the situation. But you also recognise who your true friends are.

Anime Hill from Canada opted to release his album Fevered Dreams on Petcord and agreed to have the artwork done by Synflict. More importantly, in connection with the previous paragraph, he turned out to be a patient and pleasant person to work with, despite us not at all meeting the original schedule. I’m very thankful for this as it took the pressure away from us. The original cover draft came into being very rapidly. In fact, most of the work was completed in early may, with only minor things being adjusted later. Stylistically, it follows the Djozr cover by moving the relevant track listing and artist/album info to the inner sleeve of the front cover, leaving the back of the cd as pure decoration.

Again, a couple of works have accumulated during the past days, so it seemed appropriate to add another part to the fractal series. As usual, the main application was GIMP’s fractal explorer and a couple of filters. Some of those may even be of use as an album cover (especially “measure” and “seize”).

In case you like to start you own experiments with Gimp:
Selective Gaussian Blur is your best friend, whenever you are in need of smooth gradients and getting rid of too much details. It is also most helpful to have multiple layers of the same motif processed differently and use individual layer settings and percentages.

Some of those may no longer carry the signature of stock fractal artworks. This may be because I don’t mean to repeat myself with the limited array of basic algorithms I’ve got at my disposal. Perhaps the common thread was the effect of white patches blurring structures and colours.

“Ornamental” looks quite different with its one-dimensional patterns and rather cheerful colours. No doubt my drafts have become simpler, perhaps more efficient concerning their use of stylistic means. Less room for interpretation (like the question who Nastasya Filippovna might be in reality or whether her involvement was a red hairring without any relationship to actual events at all – just to make the articles look more interesting…), more like thought and form experiments.

It was not planned this way, but recent experiments with other ways of involving fractals into images yielded into more showy material. So feel free to consider it a third part of a loosely connected series of graphics. As usual the common thread is the use of Gimp, but this time I also made use of the “fractal trace” filter, which allows an existing image as input for Mandelbrot calculations.

Both “rose” and “neon” were attempts at cover drafts that were rejected by the artists. Rose, however, has little in common with the original draft. The non-colour white plays a dominant role here, as it bleaches out the tones and provides an undefined background. If I were asked about a colour representing the death, my answer would be white. Just think of the pale scattered light of an overcast sky seamlessly blending in with a snow blanket on a winter day. By contrast, a dark background emphasises the colours and allows the possibility of spatial dimensions.

As usual, beauty and sentiments lie in the eye of the beholder, so the only valid criterion is what you yourself can feel.

Here comes the second part of fractal images that may look nice for themselves. As written before, no particular super secret weapon was used, just Gimp’s fractal explorer, some filters and a couple of layers. I’ve already mentioned what made me create those images, but there is yet another dimension: The use of colours.

Certain ranges for colours are representative of emotions that occupied my mind whilst creating the composition. For a near chaotic state like being happy and sad simultaneously, I used the “lunatic ranges” between a cold red and lilac. So it’s more like a short cut for me about what the initial reason was to spend some time for an image. There are more criteria like that, but they are meant to remain secrets, because those details would not help anyway. It’s merely a decision about what elements to use in which way, but the most important thing still is what the person looking at the image associates with it. The personal with all its hidden symbols and meanings seems rather uninteresting to me, except to those who have a reason to make a research on an artist.

As already threatened in the last post, here is a first selection of works that dived more deeply into fractals. The technique at a glance is to use Gimp’s Fractal Explorer and then proceed with further manipulations. The bulk of the magic is done by the combination of layer effects, only to a lesser degree come filters into play here (additionally a very small subset of those). There is one and the same story behind those images:

I was driven by the desire to express something that I couldn’t express in a poem. At a certain point, you just can’t put up with words any longer, so you try to find comfort in non-verbal communication. Like the unexpected departure of a beloved person and hopes that didn’t materialise. Or the famous blank stare into nothingness. I sometimes encounter persons with huge frightened eyes that don’t seem to recover anytime soon. When it is a young woman, it even has something of a tragedy and I’d love to learn the story behind.

In one way or another, arts are a sophisticated way of seeking attention. The problem is when you define yourself by what you create, then you will inevitably attract persons that just accept you so long as you keep up your creations. By the time you confuse interest in your work with interest in your person, you will run into trouble, because it makes you vulnerable to a certain breed of dishonest persons looking for a way to distract themselves from their empty lives.

So use the images with caution. Just see what you want them to display.