Album HYPNO APPLE is my debut release, psychedelic rock, shoegaze, RnB. I decided to shoot a promo video on the webcam of the laptop on which I wrote the music, so that everything was as direct as possible, on one computer. For the videos, I chose 4 tracks out of 12 and started coming up with images and storyboards. The album has a vibe of childhood nightmares, and I created images - the Reverse, the Ghost, the Maniac killing in a dream, and the Moon.
After I came up with the storyboards and images, I decided to do video tests on the webcam. This experiment and first experience with shooting artistic video on webcams confirmed - it doesn't matter what you shoot with, the picture is formed by light and composition.
When I was preparing, I realized that I had 7 different light sources, 2 of which were smart lamps that could change brightness and color.
When making cover options, I used neural networks and generated images in the style of Gloomy David Hockney, which served as references for textures and colors. Here I wrote a prompt in the spirit of "gloomy David Hockney, eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, webcam texture..." after which I finished drawing images and made collages.
I wanted to convey a detailed story on the cover and show as many images from all the songs on the album in one plane. I decided that a painting with a car crashing into a tree was too complicated for a cover, so trying to simplify it, I left the main central image - the apple that remained on the apple tree after the crash. There was a version of the album title "pocket prison of dreams of an apple man" based on the title "the broken hearts club of Colonel Pepper". From this title came the image of a sinister apple, a fruit, an entity that lives inside. Some kind of spirit, director of all nightmares, "Idea of Evil" as in the manga Berserk. I liked this image and how it is open to interpretation, so in the end I decided to keep it as the final cover option.
Here are a few more cover options that didn't work:
A sleeping boy generated from a combination of photos of my friend's sleeping brother and my childhood photos, with a sinister butterfly whispering nightmares to the boy on his pillow. This was the initial idea for the cover.
These sketches already started using photos of my childhood room and myself as a baby. They convey the vibe of the album but only for me, so they didn't work. After my mom took this photo, I said, 'Mom, go to sleep, I'll fall asleep on my own, you don't need to put me to bed.'
And in this option, a photo with an apple tree at my country house where I spent time in my childhood. The apple covered in cobwebs helped form the final cover image.
The final result of the album cover and single cover ahead of the album release:
Listen to the entire album
