Zippity2Dads

I just finished a CD cover (a 4-panel Digipak + disc face in technical terms) for a group called "Zippity2Dads" who sing children's songs: "More Beatles than Barney" they say. At the top here you see the finished product complete with template guides, and arranged as it will be printed, all on one sheet of cardboard. I put quite a bit of work into this one.



Firstly, the band wanted an old photograph with children being children, since the name of the CD is "Just Being A Kid". One of the members really liked this old slide from my father's collection...



They gave me complete artistic license so I ran with this 70's vibe and came up with a design based on playing with Hot Wheels cars outdoors on that old orange track, as the picture shows. Incidentally, yes that's me in the picture, and Brian, and Jay. But I didn't use it because we were in it. It just worked. And check out that cool Jaguar Mark II parked back there...I didn't remember any of our neighbors having that!

My vision for the back cover was a close-up of the props from the picture, basically cars and track on concrete. I didn't happen to have any orange track lying around, so I went to Toys R Us and bought 1 piece of it ($0.99 in case you're wondering). As for the cars, well, Zach has enough to start a small auto company, so I used a few of his that had the right colors and no decals that would show.



The lighting was tricky, as you can imagine. I needed pretty good slightly off-center flat lighting with mild shadows and not too much specular highlight action. Here's the setup I ended up with, after much experimentation:


And here's the other car's 15 minutes of fame:


For the concrete, I just took a picture of my porch!


I chopped all this stuff up and composited it in Photoshop, all in CMYK because they use a 4-color process to print them, like a poster, or cereal box.

Well, they loved the design! So, Happy Happy! The CD has now gone through mastering, the last piece of information I needed to finish the design was the official list of song times. I'm supposed to sign off the proof they send us and then it's on to the press. They promised me a few copies when they are shipped!