Question 2 - How effective is the combination of your main product with ancillary texts?

How effective is the combination of your main product with ancillary texts?

My digipack - Stay Young, by the new upcoming British Rock Band - Dora Nadine, links closely to its CD design. The themes - insanity, and surrealism are running throughout both products. 

The front panel to the digipack is the most captivating one of the design, and its going to be the one that attracts the audience's attention to it first.  I wanted the product to be illustrated as this creates the idea that the world the artists is living in, is not real. The colours are bright and vibrant which adds to the theme of disorientation and confusion to what is real and what is not, again shown in my music video through the fact that the main artists (lead singer) is having nightmares about an obsessive girl. The audience never find out whether what he is seeing about her, is real or not. This is illustrated right at the start with the shot of him tossing and turning in bed.

For example, one artist who links to my art design in the final product is Vladimir Kush. He is a Russian surrealistic artist and sculptor who's paintings seem dream like. Vladimir often refers to his paintings as a "metaphorical realism". I wanted to also get this effect in my Panels. As my music video was rather disorientating for the audience and for the plot line, I wanted to create interesting art that also went with this theme. 

The main feature in the first Panel, is that it is based on Mars. This planet has  always seem to receive a lot of popularity and media, the debate of whether there is life on Mars or not? Therefore by basing my front cover on that planet I have linked it to my question within my music video - Whether the girl is in his dreams or his reality?  Not only does it link to the running question; including Mars has added to the element of being within a dream rather than actually living in real time. It allows the audience to decide for themselves whether it is all in his head or not. 

Dali-esque Surrealist Art by Vladimir Kush

Although my video is quite a dark and depressing plot, I wanted the design to act as a juxtaposition towards the music video. Normally the design would reflect the mood of the music video, which in this case I would have used just the artist with a dark background, with maybe the obsessive girl in corner looking down on him. At first I was going to use this design but then I thought it would have a much bigger impact if I used something much more out of the ordinary to add another layer to the product and the music video. 

Another design that I was going to use was including the artwork of an all seeing eye. This was meant to represent the fact that an all seeing eye would protect whoever owned it, from evil. From the running theme of heaven and hell in the music video, I thought it be appropriate to include a design that would illustrate this quite strongly. The fact that all the way through the video, the man is haunted by this image of the girl chasing him. 

The writing in the first Panel is quite relaxed and not rigid like most fonts used in digipacks. I choose this because in the music video, the themes are quite serious and therefore by using a more cartoonist font, its creating a contrast between the two products.

This does link with other designs with the genre of Rock. For example, if you take a look at "A Day to Remember" album design you will find that they have just used illustration on all the panels. Granted it is much more professional that my design, it still shows the running theme within the genre of my single I have chosen. 

(Panel Design - Did not use. - All seeing Eye concept)

My Inside Panels again reinforces' the feature of the product that the music video is a confusion between reality and dreams. Inside the panels are the continuation of "aliens". Again these are made to look cartoonist, to take of the edge of the emotions, however they do represent the "monsters" in his life, which would refer to the girl. It could be argued that this isn't very direct as most would assume that they are just there to add to the theme of Mars, but they do have a reason. Its adding to the fact that the main singer is always being watched by this girl, but this is shown through these "aliens" in the panels. They are everywhere the singer goes, wherever he looks. In the music video, the front man is always isolated. He has no contact with any other human being, which is why I have made him the only person within the design. To create the theme of isolation within both productions.

 It adds to the effect that he has been rejected from society, maybe because of his madness? The delusions that he seems to be having, which again links back to the whole idea of Mars being one whole hallucination. Delusions and hallucinations are categorized as a mental health disorder belonging to the illness - Schizophrenia. They are slightly different in what they mean - Delusions are when you have a false belief or opinion about something, for example when you believed that people are talking about you behind your back, when they're not. However Hallucinations are when you truly see something that isn't there, and for example in this production, the main singer is seeing a girl who might not actually be there (its up to the audience to decide their own opinion on it), but from my view, she is not. He also may be seeing that he lives on Mars when really, he does not.  This illness normally develops when a person wants to convince themselves that something isn't true, for example when a big life event has occurred (death in the family) and they convince themselves that, that person is still there, then the illness develops. 

The Magazine Advert I have designed, would be included within an NME newspaper. The NME is a alternative music magazine that includes mostly British up coming new bands. This would suit my band that I have used. The Magazine Advert is quite different than my digipack in the sense that it does not include the illustrations, this was deliberate. I wanted the Magazine to more relate directly to the music video, compared to my panels. The background colour of the advert - black. This colour is normally identified with death, depression, etc. It is related to all negative factors, which runs with the themes of my music video a lot more than the digipack directly. I wanted it to be simple as the music video is quite chaotic and this would be a nice contrast for the audience and wouldn't over complicate the productions. 

Again the isolation is another theme within my magazine which corresponds to the digipack panels and the music video. The darkness behind him could be represented that he is surrounded  that he has no way back out of his illness and the obsession with the girl. The fact that the artist is looking into nothing, an empty space again links back with the isolation, that no one else is there to comfort and help him with his problems.