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| original sketch, ball point pen |
One of my favorite rappers- Playdough of Deepspace 5, Phonetic Composition, and Ill Harmonics- approached me to do cover art for his mixtape collabo with worship crooner Heath McNease (don't sleep, dude can rap his tail off as well)... "We were talking about album artwork," he said in the email, "and all I could think of was you. I
know you're a long time head and have Wu history without even asking.
You'd smash the kung-fu, hiphop, comic book rawness we need. You would
be perfect for this and I'd love to have you do the artwork." He laid out how much they were looking to pay, and it was music to my ears... So it wasn't long before I started sketching...
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| Inks. brush pens,photoshop |
Playdough couldn't make heads or tails of my roughs but He trusted me to do a good job. He reminded me that he wanted to be portrayed in
the hotdog suit from the teeshirt I did for the promotion of his last album Hotdoggin... so I changed that, plus I flipped the composition before I did the finishes and inks. I had fun drawing the caddy, as flawed as it is...I traced the Wu-tang emblem with Illustrator, then turned it into a flag and worked the composition together in Photoshop.
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| Final naked art, colored w/Photoshop |
They wanted it to have the traditional Wu-tang font, so I tracked down a free download (it's called "bard" in case you care) and lettered the cover in Photoshop.
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| Final Cover w/letters. Lettered in Photoshop |
The remaining album art was made with the existing elements and my modest design skills.
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| Art for the back of the insert. Photoshop and a little illustrator |
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| ceedee art. Photoshop and a little Illustrator |
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| Ceedee case interior art. Original drawing + Photoshop. |
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| back cover/tracklist. Illustrator. |
I hope that fans who cop the record online and on merch tables enjoy
the artwork! Wu-tang has a rich history of great comicbook style art on
their records, so I was really flattered that Playdough and Heath felt like I could help them sneak into the rugged slums of Shaolin. I grew up staring at album art while absorbing beats and rhymes, so I'm glad to provide something for current heads to stare at... y'know, for those tracks that don't have videos!
Wed, White and Wu drops Tuesday, November 8.
peace,
-samax
[EDIT:Listen to it here]
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