MY COVER

My cover uses three of my original images that were either terrible or taken when someone was joking around





I tried out various ways to use these images as my photos but I generally hated the way they turned out. It was impossible to edit the images into a way that looked visually appealing. The covers I made were not very good and I really did not want to submit it. Despite the fact I was proud of my editing skills, the image itself look awful and was not what I wanted my magazine to look like.

So instead I decided to try a new way to make the covers look how I wanted them too.



To do this I decided to make my images look more like my mock cover of APOLLO that had The Sonics album cover on it. I really liked the colour of the magazine and the way the main image was done with a stencil effect, also known as pochoir. In addition this effect would allow me to avoid using the terrible pictures entirely but still let me use original images.

Finding a way to make stencil was difficult, and after review I realised that there was a lot easier way to do the effect. But for the sake of review, I'll just talk about the way I made it and not the easier method.







THE METHOD

I started off by having the image of my choice placed over the top of a transparent background. I then removed the background of the Image so that I didn't have to worry about it later in production. I didn't have to worry about the background being choppy, except around the hair, as most of it would be cut out later entirely. Then I duplicated the image so that I had an original copy and a layer.

I then reduced the brightness and increased the contrast dramatically so that the darker areas I wanted, like the hair and the eyes would stand out against the rest of the image. Now this is were it gets difficult.

I then reduced the opacity of the layer copy so that the original would be shown. Then, whilst being on the layer copy, I used the eraser tool to rub out everything around the eyes and hair.

Throughout the process I had to keep checking that it looked the way I wanted it too by hiding the original so I could see the one I was editing clearly. When I first tried it out it took a lot of time, but as it went on, I found it easier and easier to do. After I done all the erasing I needed to do, and I made sure I was happy with it, I had to then make the image completely black so that the effect would carry. This was simple, all I did was reduce the exposure to zero and voila, a stencil out image of my model.

I then saved the image as a .png so that it would remain at full quality and also transparent. And then I opened it up as a layer on my magazine cover spread and positioned it to were I wanted it to. I repeated this two more times with my other models so that we had three face in total. I then added the star layer over the top of the stencil faces and erased the area around it that I didn't need. So finally I had the main image for the cover sorted and all I needed was the text.

For the cover, the text was not too difficult as I was going for the more minimalist look than anything else. So I used the name of my fake bands that I had been using for the drafts, and I used the Masthead that I had pre-made whilst again doing the drafts. I pulled in a barcode and a date to make it more conventional, and finally added a last minute slogan that I am currently on the bench about.
And that is how I made my cover.









The Final Product 

These are the final pieces of my magazine. The double page spread, the cover and the contents page. 
The double page spread
I am most proud of my double page spread. It looks like how I wished it would look and maybe turned out a lot better than I expected it would.


The Cover
For my cover I went for the minimalist look. Despite how happy I was with it, it is mostly because my images were, in my opinion, terrible. so going for a look like this allowed me to use a minimalist look whilst still using my original images.
The Contents page
My contents page is my least favourite of the three. Whilst it turned out better than I thought it would, visually it is not my favourite.

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THE MISSION

To create a front cover, contents page and double page spread of a music magazine with original Images and design.

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