As part of the N’we Jinan / InPath programme who help native Canadian youth in the arts, I was commissioned to create artwork for “Rebellion”, a song written and performed by a group of students from the Kitigan Zibi Kikinamadinan School, in Kitigan Zibi, Quebec.
Supplied with the above image, I sought to give the artwork a bold, contemporary, rebellious feel, in-line with the song title. I wanted to use the fire pit as an additional focal point, bringing it to life.
I noticed that the fire pit wasn’t central in the original images’ composition, so along with cutting out the students, I would also cut out the fire pit separately, shifting it left to the middle of the image and brought it to life with some lovely royalty free flames, made to look as realistic as possible with various layer effects in Photoshop.
Adjusting the saturation and playing around with the colour levels and exposure, I settled on a ‘contemporary, retro’ look to the image, similar in feel to the type of filters you might expect of Instagram, setting it to a burgundy/plum background to stand out, and framing the texture of the original image behind the group, knocking back the opacity and stripping the colour out… and of course, leaving enough room at the top for typography, producing the result below as the song’s cover:
I would also create various social media graphics, including the below Instagram story image to promote the song’s music video.
The video can be viewed here: