Back Cover for Tetris Attack Music Album

I am currently working on images for a Tetris Attack album project. With the front cover finished (read about my process for it here), next was the back cover.

Inked back cover

Image for the back cover should be something that can be covered by track list. With Tetris Attack in mind, I thought of the game world (B1) or in-game background tiles (B2).

First round of thumbnails

Xaleph, the project director, chose B1. He suggested adding musical bars for the front cover, so I added musical bar to the back cover as well.

Pencil sketch

This image came together rather quickly. It is simple with few elements. It gave me second thoughts. Is this too simple? Am I being lazy?

Inked back cover?

Just to see if there was something better, I embarked on another idea: a group shot of all the pal characters in the game.

Pals thumbnail

Before drawing this thumbnail, I needed to get familiar with all 8 pal characters. I did so by copying their in-game portraits. That was when I discovered even more characters: Froggy has crab friends, Poochie (the dog) has the monkey, Rapahel (the raven) and Gargantua Blarg (the head with fangs) has shy guys, Lakitu (the turtle on cloud) has the birds...

I sketched symmetric composition and asymmetric composition. I liked the symmetric one better, so I used it for the above thumbnail. For drama, I added a giant Bowser scowling in the background.

Pals pencil

When I showed this to Xaleph, his reaction was basically "Holy shit! Two cakes back covers!" And so I drew the pencil sketch. This time, the image was not simple. Each character is simple, but I got to be disciplined to get the placement, size, and posing good enough. Once I was happy with the pencil, inking was faster.

Next post, I hope I have something to show for the painting process. See you then!

Painting Tetris Attack Music Album Cover

Final painting

I covered ideation process of this album cover in a previous post. In this post, I will cover my painting process.

The image will be the cover of an album that re-imagines music from the game Tetris Attack. The color scheme was intuitive to me: blue sky (the game intro says "Now, let's go play, together... Together under the clearest of blue skies."). Yoshi is green, while Lip is violet/pink in contrast. They are half in shadows for contrast...

Classic blue sky

Trendy blue sky

I tried hard to come up with alternative color schemes. They cannot be radically different, so I simply varied the hue of the sky. In my mind, they are "classic" and "trendy".

• Classic blue is how sky blue is usually captured. As an example, consider the cover for Tatsuro Yamashita's "For You".
• Trendy blue is influenced by digital color aesthetics, where shifting hue to something unusual is considered interesting.

I presented the option to Xaleph, the project director, and he immediately chose classic blue. So began the painting process.

I started by adding gradient to the background sky to add interest. Next was the tedious process of painting local colors. I also worked on the shadows, making them more detailed. To simplify the process, I painted the shadows using a flat color. This way, I could focus on the shapes formed by the shadows.

Adding colors to lit area

Once the shadows on Yoshi and Lip were good enough, I started picking colors for the area in shadow. Mostly I picked the lit color, made it darker and more saturated, then shift the hue towards blue.

Meanwhile, I also added color to more background elements like the instruments, the game tiles, the rock Yoshi jumped from, and the flowers. The idea is to keep all elements at more or less the same stage to avoid overworking an area and neglect the rest of the painting.

Adding colors to shadow area

I thought the lit area should be brighter, so I applied an exposure adjustment layer. To my surprise, the whole painting was too dark; so I left the exposure layer as an overall brightening.

I started adding gradient and color variations on the lit area. I spent more effort painting ambient occlusion to the area in shadow. On hindsight, perhaps this was unwise; but it was necessary.

I had fun shading the game tiles. Combining simple shading with limited selection of colors created surprising pleasant illusion of "painted look".

Painting the game tiles and overall brightening

At this point of the painting, the logo was finalized. One small problem: I left too little space for the logo at the top. I did draw more elements outside the crop area so I enlarge the crop area and fit the logo into the image. I ended up with the composition below.

The final stretch was a bit of everything, usually summarized in this kind of article as "finishing touches". The most obvious ones were the drum and the yellow star tile. I increased the contrast as much as I felt was alright. I added highlights to Lip hair because I thought it was too plain...

Adding logo and finishing touches

After inking, I found the image was simpler than before inking. With colors, I thought the image was really simple with few elements. Still, I am happy with how this image turned out. Happily, the folks at the project Discord server seemed happy with it as well.

I did receive some feedback that Yoshi looks naked. I think I will add red saddle for the final version...

Tetris Attack Music Album Logo

In the previous post, I described how I came up with the front cover of Tetris Attack rearrangement music album. The cover actually requires an additional element: album title logo.

Inked album title logo

The album title is "Tetris Attack: Hocus Pop! Opus". How would the title logo for an album that reimagined music from Tetris Attack look like? It is a tough question for me as I don't usually design logos. For hints, I browsed existing albums at OC Remix. I concluded that the logo should have the game title and the album title.

Tetris Attack felt "cute and friendly" to me, so I thought the text should be rounded. As a start, I simply combined the game title and album title. I had many questions in my mind. Should the game title be smaller than the album title? "Hocus Pop! Opus" is a long phrase for a logo. Can I break it into 3 lines? Should the game title be in the album logo at all?

Logo sketch round 1

The project director, Xaleph, picked #2. At this point, I experimented with what I knew about drawing a logo. I remembered feeling lost, unsure which idea I should draw on paper. My solution was to simply draw what I could think of.

• #1 was a redraw of the logo idea picked in round 1 with one small difference: "Tetris Attack" was more dominant.
• I experimented with arc look for "Hocus Pop Opus" in #2. I also attempted to simplify the busy look by using only 2 type faces in #2 (compared to 3 type faces in #1).
• In the game, a match makes popping sound. This gave me the idea of drawing a "bursting" shape to contain "Hocus Pop Opus" in #3. I decided to emphasize "Pop!" and simplified "Tetris Attack".
• I was attracted with the idea of fitting the logo in a circle. So I drew #4.

Logo sketch round 2

Xaleph liked #3 and #1. This informed the direction for round 3.

• As I did in round 2, I started with a redraw of the "explode" shape idea with #1, giving more thought on the "explode" shape. For variation, I gave "Tetris Attack" a blocky type face and "POP!" a rounded one.
• With #2, I experimented with soft "cloud" shape for cute & friendly feel. "Tetris Attack" was now more relaxed; on a ribbon. Mystical look for "Hocus".
• #3 explored a fitted shape behind "Hocus Pop! Opus". "POP!" used a different typeface as the center of interest. "Hocus" and "Opus" looked pressed like tiles in the game. Finally, I simplified "Tetris Attack" with some aspects from the game title. The letters of "Tetris" followed the orientation in the game title; while "Attack" was a silhouette of the text in the game title.
• For #4, I experimented with a new direction. "Hocus" and "Opus" were vines around "Pop", which in turn had Yoshi's egg. Note the stylized Yoshi head shape on the bottom left. I thought this one probably looked too busy; but it was a fun exploration.

Logo sketch round 3

Xaleph wisely gave his thoughts about different elements rather than simply picking one design. He wanted the emphasis on "Pop!" and the "burst" shape. The "Tetris Attack" element should be similar to actual in-game logo.

I was painting the front cover in parallel, and sat on this for a few weeks. When the colors were good enough and it was time to add the logo, I drew this one as a "final" version.

Final logo

The next post should cover painting the front cover. See you then!