So the album art for 018 was released today, and I’m super happy with the way it turned out! The final image however, is far different from its original concept. In fact, I had a complete alternate version of 018 finished last week that was scrapped and replaced with the final version you see now.

I’ll post that original version later tomorrow, but first let me give y'all a good idea of how the creative process for albums goes by showing you the various ideas I went through while making 017.

My original concept for 017, oddly enough, is what I ended up using for my base idea for 018.

It features a striking pose of Monstercat diving off a cliff into a caverns of water below containing a sunken ship. The Monstercat crew liked this idea, but wanted me to save it for a different album, so I did.

My next idea was more similar to the final version we ended up going with. It’s a centered composition of Monstercat fishing new artists out a cavernous lake. I wanted his pose to be dramatic, active, and striking.

I liked this one a lot and moved forward on it. I got pretty far into to it when the Monstercat crew got back to me and said they weren’t really liking it. The boat looked too much like it was sinking to them, and ultimately they were right. It wasn’t quite good enough.

At this point I brainstormed a bunch of different ideas and made a few concepts to see if what the rest of the crew would like.

(You can see I tried to get away with not have to do as much work with that second one, haha)

Ultimately we ended going with a variation of the last concept. I kept the cat in his boat, got rid of the crows nest, and boom:

We finally landed on a concept we all liked.

The final version came out way better than I expected. I didn’t think the cat could be so small in the frame and still remain the image’s central focus, but I ended up proving myself wrong…

I’ll walk you guys through 018 tomorrow.