CD Artwork

[Hishnak]

Hi, I made this artwork for a local band. Any suggestions? Something that just looks wrong? I would greatly appreciate any suggestions.

Front and back of booklet


Back cover


Inside booklet (no text yet)


Tray card


The actual CD (four colors, the white will be transparent)


[EDIT]

I made a new CD. Any better than the first version?


Also, an updated front cover without the gloves and a modified "L".

[sharprm]

That looks fantastic!  No crits, except maybe the ships getter darker seems a bit weird to me since the earth is fully lit.

[Ixis]

Ok, most of this is personal suggestions, and not hard critique stuff, so take it or leave it if you want.

For the first one I'd make it so the front and back cover blend between one another. The street, sidewalk and brick wall are seamless, so why not the rest?

For the second image, the perspective is off, but it probably doesn't matter as much. Also it looks like the street in the background isn't lined up (it changes height between the two buildings on the left.)  Also it looks like the building in the background next to the tree goes out into the middle of the street.

The next two are great.

For the cd cover I'd maybe have one or two white/highlights on the text to make it more visually interesting like the logo on the cover.

[Rydin]

The gloves feel rather...flat and generic--not like your typical choice-selector-glove, you know?

Also, the white copyright text in the street is kind of hard to read....then again, isn't copyright information supposed to be hard to read?

But still, really cool idea. 

[ptoing]

The L in Flowers looks like a capital i somewhat, as it is the only one that's lowercase. Neat stuff otherwise.

[Ben2theEdge]

That is amazing. It's way too late now but I would have worked in a lower resolution (possibly half of what you have there) to really emphasize the pixel-ness of the art.

[Hishnak]

thanks for the comments.

it looks like the street in the background isn't lined up (it changes height between the two buildings on the left.)  Also it looks like the building in the background next to the tree goes out into the middle of the street.

You're right. I'll fix those right away.

The gloves feel rather...flat and generic--not like your typical choice-selector-glove, you know?

I removed the gloves to see if I liked it better. I think it make it look less busy.

The L in Flowers looks like a capital i somewhat

Indeed.

[Hatch]

Minor technical crit: since you've got a 4/4 tray card, I'm assuming you'll be using a clear tray? If so, the front of the case might be a little jarring with the black starry sky on the spine and the cheery blue sky on the booklet. Might be an intentional contrast, but it's one of those things that's really easy to miss without a mockup.

[Twinspiration]

You did a fantastic job with this!

However, some of the taller front-row buildings' rooftops don't look quite right..
It's probably just because all of the rooftops have the same height and my eyes are just trying to convince me that shorter buildings should have shorter roofs.

[emlan]

I'm not fond of the cat, compared to the rest of the smooth looking pictures it looks a bit scribbly and unpolished...specially the tail.

[fil_razorback]

Looks fantastic !
What kind of band is that ? =)


On a more technical side, my only crit is that the angle of the first row of buildings is completely different from the background's.

[Feron]

awesome stuff!

is it me or is the lizard shaded in a completely different style than the rest?

[Larwick]

I think adding some highlights to the lizard monster would help it merge with the rest of the piece. 
It's lower hand is smaller than the other, you may want to look at that too.

Awesome stuff, good luck with it!

[dreamisle]

Very awesome work - I seriously envy you on this one.

One slight thing I noticed no one else pointed out - will the back of the book blend well with the tray background? They have the same background but that street part isn't continued on the tray background from the left. Even if you just carried in a portion and then had it break off into nowhere like a cliff it might look nicer than just having it stop at the edge of the booklet.

All in all great work

ETA some of the text on the back cover appears have more leading (line spacing) than the other text - mainly the first line of track listings - there's a couple pixels of extra space below it.

[Hooch]

Hello, I finally signed up after lurking for a while around here just because I love this piece so much. I hope its not too late to give my tips for it (eg its gone to press already).

I wrote a big block of text about making sure you have a bleed on the art but on closer inspection it looks like you already have included one. So my other advice was to make sure once you're done to scale it up to 300 dpi yourself. You don't want some noob pre-press guy doing it for you and using bicubic instead of nearest neighbour.
I think having the pixels any larger as was suggested would make it more obvious if the trimming is slightly off, as it isn't very precise in terms of cutting between 2 pixels or even straight for that matter.

I think the street lights need a little tweaking, at the moment they look like they are pointing onto the footpath, not the road. Either shading or the angle they are on is causing that, not sure.

I wasn't sure about Ixis' comment about making the leaflet seamless, I liked the idea of having some of it contunue and some not. Then then I realised you could just make the building in the 'space' side futuristic versions of the current ones (I assume they are the buildings on the flying chunk of rock in the background of the other picture). This way they could flow on from the other buildings but still fit in with the space area. Not too sure how this would fit in with the story you are telling though, as in, it would mean the monster is attacking the flying city not earth.

Who's Sam?