Once More With Feeling CD Cover ~ (August 2002) So you noticed I was slowing down with the updates, thought I was gettin' tired of Photoshop, huh? Surprise! I've been working on this project f-o-r-e-v-e-r it seems, for at least the last month. I wanted to do something special for Val's big anniversary OMWF contest, and there was also an I.B. challenge to create a CD cover, and I just figured out how to burn VCDs, so I decided that I wanted to make a full CD set, with liner notes, cd label, cover, etc.

The cover came reasonably quickly, as did the CD label (back near the beginning of August). The liner notes (divided by panel) were a whole different story. At first I was going to do one panel for each song, but that was just a little too insane, even for me. So I scaled it back to 2 songs per (except for I'll Never Tell and Walk Through the Fire, each of which had too many lyrics to squeeze onto a single panel with another song). Took me ages to gather my screen shots, and then finally I started having at a couple of weeks ago. Turns out that the font was quite illegible at the canvas size I needed for this site, and even the high res versions don't print as well as I'd hoped on my inkjet (though I haven't tried photographic paper yet, maybe that will be better). So while the versions shown here have the same layout (important images are scooted around away from the edges where the lyrics go) you won't actually see any text. I'm hoping they stand on their own without it... you know the lyrics by heart anyway, right?

Technically, they're all pretty similar. After I created the CD cover, I just made another copy of the psd file and rearranged the contents into CD shape for the label, and then when that was done, I made yet another copy to serve as a base for each panel. For the panel base, I deleted all the individual images and left only the stock images I'd used for color & lighting. Then I added screen shots for whatever panel I was working on, and started playing. Proof that you can get all sorts of different results with the same stock images!

The stock images in question were: (1) one of the musical publicity shots (the one with Dawn, Spike & Buffy at the Bronze) which I'd blurred and set to screen. (2) the same shot, but this time with the "other->maximize" filter applied, set to overlay (3) a LA nightscape with blurred red tail lights on a highway and some lighted buildings, filtered a bit to make it sort of abstract (usually screen, sometimes overlay) - this is where the red "woosh" you see everywhere comes from (3) the same nightscape, but warped into a big arc with the distort->polar-coordinates filter (again, usually set to screen)-- this is where the gold arcs come from. These are each used multiple times in each indvidual piece, re-sized, tilted at crazy angles, different parts masked out.

"Once More" is in the font Andes and "with feeling" is in Harlow Solid Italic. The outline effect was achieved by (1) control-clicking on the text layer to select the words (2) from the select menu, chosing to expand the selection a few pixels (3) creating a new layer, and stroking the selection with a light color (4) using the wand to click outside the outlines on the stroked layer, and filling with a dark color on another (lower) layer (5) deleting the "middle parts" of the letter, like the inner circle on the "O", from the dark layer. The green titles are in Twentieth Century Poster, with layer effects applied (outerglow->multiple). I used brushes from roshiweb.com to decay the solid yellow square around the edges of the cover

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Shanti writes:

Oh my god this is sooo beautiful! I understand about the color explosion ; ) This is great! I loved the wavy thingies everywhere. It makes it so active and in motion ("going through the motions" ; )

Lessa writes:

Vrya this is just loveley. Great images so well put together. I just love the colors. You know that ep us so complex, I think the only way to capture the whole thing is with several peices as you have done here.

Melanie

Vyra, this is amazing! It looks like you put an incredible amount of work into this! I love it!

Val writes:

Damn, girl! This is incredible.. the color, of course, is awesome in all of them. I adore the arrangement of them all, the way the panels blend together or the way you have them on the set.. love how they are placed. Looks like an add you might see in the official buffy magazine for their CD! Each panel is amazing in itself.. so full of images! I think i like 4 the most... but i love the lighting in 7 too..too hard to decide~ just awesome professional quality work!