OUAN503 - Secret 7" - Max Richter, Dream 3

I would say for me personally, this record sleeve, Dream 3 by Max Richter and Imagine by John Lennon were the two that I had the most ideas for initially. I believe this is due to the titles being representative of the work I'm most used to producing and the work I view and enjoy most. This includes surrealism, dark imagery, ambiguous themes and a general sense of dream like scenarios or imagined worlds. Despite having a lot of ideas, it also makes things difficult because nailing down a specific idea becomes that much harder due to the difference within them and the various conflicting elements. In contrast to the others I wanted the Dream 3 record sleeve to be a little more literal, by depicting someone thinking about or fulfilling their dream. Not necessarily in a direct way but a more suggestive way. During the time that I was attempting the Secret 7" competition and treating it like a brief, I was looking at a lot of photography of the Milky Way that people had taken from remote locations in locations such as Scandinavia or Kazakhstan. They go out to these locations and camp out under a sky unaffected by light pollution before taking incredible long exposure photographs of the Milky Way as it can be seen from Earth. This is the kind of imagery that provided me with the inspiration to then in turn illustrate someone camped out, exploring and star gazing.



The final image took advantage of all of the bright and seemingly unnatural colours that are often seen in these kind of photographs. From bright greens and blues to purples, pinks and reds that are caused by various properties of the atmosphere and it's interaction with light. The narrative I wanted to communicate with this image was that the character shown is heavily invested in the idea of exploring, not just Earth but beyond that too. I swapped out an image of stars and the Milky Way that is shown in the photographs that inspired me, and replaced it with a rocket launch. The idea of this was heavily influenced by the work of Makoto Shinkai, a Japanese animator and director that often uses shuttle launches and contrails with huge open skies and sunsets within his work. In a way this was a homage to this particular motif that he repeatedly uses that to me has always communicated the idea of dreams and ambition. Partly because of the efforts and drive that it takes by a huge number of collaborators and individuals to achieve such a feat, but the idea of exploration beyond our own planet shows drive and longing to discover, which was the underlying message of the image I was trying to create whilst tying it back to the theme of dreams and the title of the record. From the title itself in my mind there was two avenues of interpretation of the world dream that I wanted to consider representing visually for this particular sleeve. That is the surrealism and unknown nature of dreams and what we know about them. Or, the idea of a personal goal or 'dream'. When it came to actually producing the visuals for the record sleeve this probably took the longest because I spent a lot of time trying to perfect the tone of the image in a way that I wanted it to be provoking in an emotional sense, and certainly relatable. Furthermore, quite some time was spent trying to establish a style and an approach that would be able to convey the visual message and themes that I wanted to express. The styles itself was inspired by artist Jon McNaught for his use of colour, shape and storytelling ability. Despite the relative simplicity of his work I absolutely love the way he manages to convey ideas about light simply through combining certain colours and gradients. Shadows play a big part in his work I also feel, adding a very dramatic element and complimenting his ability to describe times of day to the observer visually simply by the size or length of a shadow. I attempted this simple but effective technique in this particular image, hoping it would do what I've seen him do in a lot of his work and add a real sense of feeling and wonder. The image was made entirely digitally using my knowledge of colours and experimenting with layers with some constant adjustment until the right lighting was achieved. Furthermore, textures became an important aspect to the image in my opinion because they added character and depth to the image that otherwise wasn't there, making it seem like it was made from paper.

Artist that inspired this piece; Jon McNaught



Overall, I enjoyed making this image - drawing influence from film makers and auteurs like Makoto Shinkai in combination with artists like Jon McNaught. This record sleeve has emerged as probably my favourite of the seven that I have and plan to create. For me, it captured what I set out to do as an idea most closely and although I wasn't able to experiment that much I learnt a lot making it about how certain elements such as shadows can play a big part in an image. Finally, I think with more effort funnelled into this image alone as oppose to having to create seven quite close together, I think it could have had some other relatable and atmospheric qualities worked into it, but I'm happy with the end result despite this.

Max Richter - Dream 3