Unlike Pluto / Cover Artwork
Photo Composite
I was hired by CloudKid a well known record label based in Germany to create a visual for an upcoming release by Unlike Pluto, one of their signed artists. The idea was for me to create a photo composite based on a vision that he (the artist) described to the record label in order to visualize the song.
The concept the artist described was a crown decaying but with plants and flowers growing out of it. During the briefing meeting the people from the label we discussed the context as a decaying city as well, like a post-apocalyptic scenery around the crown so all the decay and grimy textures make sense. I loved the concept. I have done similar work before for HATCLUB and Jae Tips where the main subject was baseball hats and sneakers so I was confident I could pull it off. However, the project was ambitious with a tight deadline because I had to work on this photo composite project along with another retouching one for a different client in parallel. This means I needed to be efficient in the way I approached this.
Obviously the main challenge was the crown since this was the main subject. I needed to be able not only to place it in the right perspective within the scene but also be able to light it properly; at least for my retouching and photo composite purposes.
I ended up getting a 3D model of a crown. Seemed like the more reasonable option. During the brief we discussed it being a simple shaped crown with a somewhat iconic shape; like the Rolex logo type of crown shape. Something easy to identify as a crown in the middle of a busy scene.
I was able to find a 3D model that fit the brief perfectly with some retouching and modifications to be done afterwards in Adobe Photoshop®. I used Adobe Substance 3D to manipulate the object and render it.
The background plate I found it in Adobe Stock®, luckily. This saved me a lot of time. I could have found a similar picture of a city highway and fill it with vegetation, destroy parts of the buildings and streets to make it look apocalyptic and get a similar vibe to this plate in particular, but this one already existed and given the time frame available to work on this it seemed logical for me to use it as a basic background asset instead of building it from scratch. I did modified it a lot and color graded it very differently though. I didn't leave it as is. My main worry was the crown and all the work that will be involved in customizing it and have all those plants and flowers grow out of it as requested by the artist's vision.
I also found the majority of my remaining assets there at Adobe Stock® along with ShutterStock®, Texturelabs and Unsplash. I needed a lot of textures to make the crown look old, rusty and the metal to have some patina on it. It was important for the crown not to look shiny and new as it came in the 3D model.
I also gathered a lot of flowers. I wanted to these flowers to be the main source of life and color within a scene that otherwise would look dead and sad. I also needed to display a variety of flowers to make things interesting. Different shapes and colors used organically within the composition to bring life to the crown without saturating the composition with too many distracting elements.
Flowers were important but vines are the more important source of texture and meaning to the crown. When nature takes over an object not only it changes its textures but its meaning. A shiny gold object like the crown will change textures and appearance after some time of being left to decay. Rust streaks will appear, shine will fade and the exposure to humidity will tarnish the metal. Plants will find a way to survive around an object like that by co-existing in the same space and "invading" the inanimate object. All these things in conjunction will showcase the decaying part of the concept, allowing also for life to grow out of it in the shape of beautiful flowers. I was able to find tons of stock images of weeds and vines to serve this purpose.
Now, having gathered all my assets it was time to bring them all together in Adobe Photoshop® which is and always has been my image editing software of choice. The process was pretty straight forward but also long and tedious. Adding all those textures, vines, plants and flowers was A LOT of work cause you also have to work the lights and shadows of each element individually.
The final 16bit PSB file is 1.8GB and has 294 layers in 76 groups. It took me around 30 hours to work on it and later on prepare it for animation.
Here is a layer breakdown video that illustrates the whole retouching and photo compositing process:
It was really cool to see the artwork being used for the release of the music single. I forgot to mention that I was able to listen to it before it came out. It is called Joke's On Me created & produced by Unlike Pluto featuring an amazing singer named Joanna Jones. I listened to it on repeat multiple times as I worked on the artwork. I really loved the song and I think the concept Unlike Pluto wanted for the visual was spot on. I am glad I was able to help and bring it to life.
The record company told me beforehand they would be hiring an animator to work on my file so they could animate the plants and flowers as they grow out of the crown in order to use this animation as a visual for the YouTube release of the single.
In order to do so I needed to prepare a "simplified" version of my artwork with all the plants and flowers still separate but with no adjustment layers, just the individual layer for each element and its shadows also separate. They also wanted to have the patina / rust textures of the crown separate so they could animate it as if the crown aged and shows the patina gradually.
The animation PSD file was lighter: 757MB, 110 layers in 72 groups. The animation turned out amazing, you can check it out here from Unlike Pluto's YouTube Channel:
This was an awesome project for me to work on. I am happy with the results. The artist, the record label and people seem to be happy with the result as I am. Hopefully I'll have the chance to do more of this type of projects. They are a welcome change of pace from all the work I do for the sneakers and footwear industries.
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