Album Cover Evaluation

Album Evaluation

Research:

First for my album evaluation research part of the course, we researched how gender is represented in hip hop album covers. The albums were usually in a dark background with occasionally in suburban areas, the artists were wearing clothing in association with gangs. For example, hoodies and dark coloured casual clothing. Also the male artists were mostly looking down at the camera as this represents male dominance in the music industry. Also some album covers would have an half naked women on the front cover, this also shows gender representation as this could possibly be sexist to women as they are only used for eye candy to attract men's eyes and draw them in to buy the album. Also we researched different music videos and how they show gender representation, for example, Robin Thicke's  blurred lines was a prime example as there were half naked women parading around the artists used only to attract men to watch the music video. After that, we watched a documentary called hip hop honeys which showed the effects of young women on being in one of these music videos and how they pay lots of money to change there body.

Planning:
When we were planning our album covers, we made a album cover for a artist in our genre using our photo shop skills. This would test our presentational skills, construction of representation, understanding of codes and convection's and creativity and target appeal to target audience. Next we drew the template for our album covers which would be a base and a helpful understanding of what my album cover was going to look like. After that we analysed these drawings giving our self's grades to show what we think we done. My drawing consisted of the artist on a stage looking down at the audience showing his dominance as an artist in the hip hop genre. I would later use this picture and the grades and feedback I have been given to create my personalised album cover.

Production:
After researching the hip hop genre and the effects it has on gender and how males and females can be used as eye candy, we created our template for our overall album cover which we drew gaining feedback and grades to help us create an perfect album cover for our course. Furthermore, after all that was done i progressed onto photo shop to create my overall album cover. First of all i made the background of my album cover and inserted a template picture so i can later take a picture of my artist in front of a green screen. Once i took a picture of my artist in front of the green screen, i used that image to go over my template so i used a real picture in front of my chosen background with the album finally being called 'thug life'. On photo shop I used the magic wand tool to crop out the background of the artist which was the green screen so i can put the picture in to fit to the background.