David Lynch's Hat: Stuff and Things

I had been in contact with Edward Wersocki from the band David Lynch's Hat through my brother, who goes to school at the Berklee School of Music in Boston and we've been toying around with the idea of doing some work together on a demo album for his music since the summer. It was slow going, but I just listened to the music a few times and came up with a couple of ideas that I could have run with. I eventually narrowed it down to two:

Long story short, we both decided on the giant robotic head idea, mostly because it fit alongside their existential ideas and had an opposing oppressive sort of feeling. My idea was something along the lines of this giant metal human head in the center of this city: did the people construct this terrible monolith based off of an image of themselves? Or did it simply appear there one day? 

Well, school eventually started and the project was put on an indefinite hold. A few weeks in however, and it turned out that our second assignment for Electronic Illustration 2 was to do an album cover. I thought that it was the perfect opportunity to pick up the project again and finally finish the album artwork. I called Ed up and told him that either way, there'd be a new design for the Hat in two weeks. Here's the work in progress, perhaps halfway through. We decided to go with a more early New York City vibe for the structures, rather than the sci-fi theme from before. Our class had to employ a few traditional textures that we had made alongside a digital painting. If you look closely, you'll notice a few ink spots and pastel/charcoal textures in the sky and clouds:

I felt like it needed more bold colors, more reflections, more communist red. If it looks evil, make it more evil. This is the final album art, complete with my logo/font design and CD template: 

I showed Ed the album cover and he was stunned, in the good way, and immediately showed Slightly Depressed Luke (other band member). Before I knew it, he sent me an email saying that they both gave it a 10 out of 10 and are going to use it on the actual album. Sweet.

This project really pushed me out of my comfort zone, mostly because it was done as a digital painting first and had a clear focus toward showcasing something that wasn't necessarily mine, which was the music. I had to make the art compliment the tunes as I heard them, which is the strange thing about album covers actually. Whenever I listen to music that I know the album art to, I always am reminded of that art as sort of the true testament to what I'm hearing and so that was the major pressure in doing this work. But I had a blast making it and gosh darnit I sure love me some metal so it really was a dream project for me. 

Here's a couple links to their site and also their Myspace. You can download the music for free, so get on that!

http://davidlynchshat.com/

http://www.myspace.com/davidlynchshat

All images and designs © Chris Loge, David Lynch's Hat 2010. All rights reserved.