CGTalk - Metal Album Cover Style Illustration

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Rayjohn551

12-13-2007, 12:56 AM

I've become fascinated with the style of illustration that many album covers in metal seem to have. i'd like know how they achieve this style (what medium/technique?.etc) and is it possible to achieve that style digitally, and if so, how would i go about doing that.

ive searched the interwebs for information but i cant seem to find anything about the illustrators

http://www.truemetal.org/metalwallpaper/indexad.html - huge library of metal album art.

if anyone has any information/advice id appreciate it, thanks!

Lunatique

12-14-2007, 10:50 PM

I think those are typically mixed media--colored pencils, airbrush, acrylic, watercolor...etc.

To mimic that look digitally, I think Corel Painter's probably your best bet, since it's speciality is natural media simulation.

bonestructure

12-20-2007, 09:29 AM

I have to agree with Robert on Painter. If you're going to work digitally instead of with traditional media, it doesn't get better than Painter. I'd also add a suggestion to study the work of Frank Frazetta and Boris Vallejo.

kayness

01-05-2008, 03:02 PM

I think it's because those metal album covers are quite eighties/early nineties where digital media hasn't become popular yet

with respect to Robert Chang's advice - I think his is an excellent one - but there are also quite a bit of album covers (especially many more recent ones) that use digital techniques like photomanipulation and montage.

My Dying Bride (http://images.google.com/images?gbv=2&svnum=10&hl=en&safe=off&q=my+dying+bride+albums), Dimmu Borgir (http://images.google.com/images?gbv=2&svnum=10&hl=en&safe=off&q=dimmu+borgir+albums), Nightwish (http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=nightwish+albums&gbv=2), Cradle of Filth (http://images.google.com/images?gbv=2&svnum=10&hl=en&safe=off&q=cradle+of+filth+albums) and Opeth (http://images.google.com/images?gbv=2&svnum=10&hl=en&safe=off&q=opeth+albums) are examples of bands that tend to favour digital styles, whether they be photomanipulation/montage and to a lesser extent digital painting and photography on their album covers.

From what I can see, in addition to old-school metal bands that prefer a painted look(duh), power metal subgenres also favour that kind of look(or pseudo-painted look) as well. Album covers of Dragonforce, Hammerfall, Turisas, Rhapsody, Manowar and Iced Earth (just search for them in google) are good examples to illustrate my point.

So it really depends on what kind of metal subgenre you want to make the cover for.

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