This DVD wrap-around cover was a tough one. The imagery we had available was from the DVD I'd produced, which meant some tricks to be played in offsetting the lower resolution of the graphics. Then there was also the usual incredibly short timeframe to pull it all off. I used a combination of Canvas and Photoshop, primarily. I like Canvas as a great tool for vector and bitmap layouts, and then fine-tuning the results in Photoshop. Too many people are wedded to Illustrator or Photoshop as the ultimate tools. The trick is to identify the right tools for the task at hand, no presupposing a particular application is appropriate (or optimal)...
FRONT (130k): getting a good shot of his face was toughest. I wanted something forceful and determined. I spent many hours reviewing the Documentary frame-by-frame to pull together a collection of possibilities. This initial pre-effort also helped me deal with the "changing" requirements. Ideally, I wouldn't have to use a very small graphic from a video snapshot of Oprah, but there were legal issues. I generated the Earth from some of my NASA work archives.
Bottom line: the client adjusted and wanted some edits of elements I didn't agree with, but... he was/is most happy with the results. 2,000 DVDs were burned for the first run.
BACK (180k): the back cover of the "Mad Cowboy: The Documentary" DVD presented a different kind of conceptual challenge. My client's interests and topics are many: how best to represent them graphically? Although I've an immense collection of copyright-free photographs and graphics, it made sense to use screen snapshots from the DVD, as reducing them and maintaining resolution sufficient for printing was feasible due to the size of the cover.
I elected for images that covered the spectrum of his life and the Documentary Howard's wife, soil (organic and sustainable agriculture), the "eye" of a cow for "mad cow disease," a victim of the disease, pigs (animal rights), vegetarian gal and produce, the concerned look of a former USDA Inspector, and the announcement by the USDA of the 1st case of mad
cow disease in the U.S. also deliberately arranged them in rough chronological order.
For the text, I studied other DVDs in my collection, worked from the credits of the movie itself, and transcribed some key text from Howard speaking early in the movie.
For the layout text, I decided that the "color" of the text needed to guide the eye in comprehension as it was hard to avoid having so much on the cover. Carefully varying color, style, and size of text made it work (or so I believe!).
Initial prep of graphics was in Photoshop, final layout was much easier and more efficient using Canvas rather than Photoshop. Everything is an object that can quickly be moved around, and using Photoshop as a layout tool would have just wasted time.
Both Howard and Willow thought the first draft was perfect. 2,000 DVDs were burned (so far).
[I also did video and audio editing, GUI interface design, and negotiation with the vendor on this project... I'll be writing about it all later in this blog]
