Current mood:	chipper
Current music:	DragonForce - Deathsquad Revolution

more Fleshiness!
So, I promised to talk a bit about the art for the latest Flesh Socket CD. So, here's a talk about it. I came up with the idea after spending a good bit of time listening to Dissection, Rick's latest black metal crazy. Those guys are some serious satanic shit, and it influenced the music on this one. There's the black metal blasphemy and satanism showing through, with hilarious parodies poking fun at desecration and the invocations. So I wanted to add that to the album cover, and it just hit me in a flash: Pentagram with SOCKET! Here's the original idea, sketched out hastily:







And, after 18 or so hours of intensive labour, it turned into this fine jem:





Originally, I was planning on doing the cover mostly computer art: I'd done the circles, and was going to add text and colour, and the black background in PhotoShop, but the more I got into it, I had to just DO it. The whole thing is done by hand: india ink in the background, the calligraphy I had to pencil in first and ink very carefully, rather than actually calligraphing it. I was really glad I did it that way -- there's a real pride in making something that turns out that good, all by hand. Also, the final circles were all drawn in free hand.

Now for the back: I've been working with Marc Wagenseil a lot lately, doing just little doodles. One of us will pencil, and the other ink: it's a great exercise, and a lot of fun. And Marc's inks are FANTABULOUS. The man has a way with a pen that's unbelievable. So I did the pencils, and asked if he'd want to do the inks, for the cover. He said he'd love to, but was really busy. Luckely, I through a party where art happened, and I got him a bit blitzed on white Russians, handed him the picture, and the inks were done by the end of the party! The next day I did the colours, and it was finished! This is what resulted:





Then I got on PhotoShop, and added the text and the background, and whatnot, turning the back cover into its amazing awesome self. The font was a boon: some kid in the design lab, where I was doing the PhotoShop work, had loaded the Harry Potter font! It was the most metal font on the computer, and had the bonus of making hilarious reference to the Harry-Potter-as-the-work-of-devil thing. My own grandmother still believes that those books are evil! Here's what the end of that led to:





Unfortunately, the bar-code had to cover up the plugs in the bottom corner. But that was okay. The last bit about the back is that the concept belongs to Rick Mallory (a.k.a. Ulf). It came from a doodle he did in class one day that he was VERY proud of. It made it into the inside cover, on the left, as you can see:





The contrast between the two images gets me every time! Oh, man, I laugh just looking at it. Rick's the man. Also in the inside cover is an inverted scan of a silly collaborative picture Andy and I did over new year's, right after midnight, while we were both a bit sloshed. It was good fun. And, to the right, is a picture of me that Brandon Phillips took, shown below. Amazing picture, too good not to go in:





Also a particularly metal and creepy shot, with a brighter undertone. Brandon's a great photographer.



And that, little ones, is the story of the Flesh Socket art, for the new album, FreeMetal. I hope you enjoyed.