CD Cover Idea - Front Cover

Step 5: I removed the shine within this newer version because I believed the technique seemed to start overused, and more so 'tacked on' rather than becoming an actual necessary and essential feature for the design.
I finished colouring the background of the image to sufficiently match the foreground, however now looking back at it I believe the colours do not provide for the most successful job at highlighting and relating towards the grime genre. Instead the red/ mahagony brown tone of the main colour and the also gold relate more towards the Soul and R&B genres instead.
The font was just a prototype use in order to see how the title would appear on the CD cover, and whilst I believe I will be sticking with the name, the actual font I feel is bland, boring and non-connotive towards the grime genre.



Step 3 and 4: Focuses on adding artificial shine within certain features of the artist's appearance, such as the artist's earring, in order to exemplify upon the artist's wealth due to success, make him appear flashier and therefore more acceptable to the audience, especially one within this genre of grime, and just make him appear more satisfying to look at on a whole. Shine was also added to the artist's eye as experimentation to see if he would again appear more pleasing to look at in terms of aesthetics, and also illustrate a glimmer of the foreboding, accomplishing future that lies ahead of this artist as symbolically he is only looking towards the light, and therefore towards positivity. This is subversive of the stereotypical grime artist, as usual they will look back upon a grim, dark background instead.
I also added some colour to the background of the image, to make it fit in with the design of the artist as well.

Step 2: Cropped out parts of the background, and made the image bigger to make the artist take up a greater portion of the CD and therefore sub-consciously appear of greater significance.

Step 1: The actual photograph for the desired image to be used within the CD cover.

With this idea for the CD cover, I had taken a photo I had of our performer; and decided to add various effects onto it to grant the image with greater aesthetic gratification and therefore make it appear more appealing. The concept of giving the artist a 'cartoonish' look I believe is subversive and challenging to the stereotypical grime artist, as it alters the tough, sinister, intimidating appearance that may be usually and conventionally associated to such an artist. I thought what would be conventional to a grime artist would be to have the artist looking away from the camera, to become a non-direct addressing pose and therefore subtly highlights the artist's ego, and makes him appear trendy and 'cool' because of it. Since he seems important enough to not have to stare at us yet we still have to stare at him.