Muchuu - Band Artwork Project

In this module I had to find one External Brief myself. This came in the form of a friend asking me to design some artwork for their band: Muchuu. Muchuu consists of two members, a brother and sister: Milky and George. It is Milky who is a personal friend of mine and who I had a lot of contact with throughout the duration of this project. This brief was characterised by the high amount of client-illustrator contact, with frequent meetings in which the client gave a lot of feedback and made many requests for the tweaking of the design.

I was asked to create 2-3 possible designs for a Spring Tour poster, but more generally to create artwork reflecting the Muchuu “brand” which could be used promotionally online.

I was also asked to rework the Muchuu logo. Here is a screenshot of their current website to give a feel of the image i was asked to build on:

Here is a link to this website where you can listen to their music:

http://music.muchuumusic.com/

I listened to their album on repeat while I roughly drew out idea after idea; trying to make the images reflect the tone of the music.

The brief I was supplied with was informal but extensive. They gave me a lot of information to work with but in the end decided to narrow it down to the following characteristics:

· Rainbow colours

· Earthy colours

· Creatures

· Nature

· Journeys

Milky also mentioned how much she liked this image:

...which I created for the Poetry Project earlier in the Semester. She particularly liked the drawing and the use of texture. This was something I kept in mind while researching and developing my artwork.

While creating the artwork for Muchuu I found the following artists inspiring:

Stacy Rozich. Her beautiful, colourful images work effectively on white backgrounds. They are floating objects or vignettes which would work equally well as part of a poster design or as promotional artwork on a web-page: this is a task my illustrations need to perform...

A couple of weeks ago I visited the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge and saw an excellent exhibition of Persian miniature painting. I found them appropriate to this brief because the aged paper gave an earthiness to the otherwise colourful illustrations. I found them a useful example of how I could combine the contradictory “rainbow colours” and “earthy colours” suggested in the brief...

Finally, Eleanor Davis’s series of screen-prints, "Fruit of the New Garden", also work well as floating objects or vignettes, like Rozich’s work, and the screen printed effect is both charming and graphically satisfying...

I asked Milky in a meeting whether she would like me to try and make some prints for this brief. She said that given the time we had and the amount of changes that would enevitably have to be made to the design due to the differing opinions of the rest of the band, the record label, etc. that she’d rather I “mocked them up” instead. She reminded me of the image “Eclipse” she liked from my previous project where i digitally added the printed texture. My final images were made using a variation of the same technique. It has been very useful for me to develope a method of “digital pretend printing” as it not only means i can quickly change a design to a clients specifications, but I will also still be able to carry on creating these sorts of images when I graduate and no longer have access to the college workshops.

I showed Milky my original design sheets to guage which aspects of my drawings she preferred to others. She liked the focus on mountains (a fixture in their lyics) and weather. She also liked the way I had depicted her and George from behind, as if we are on the journey with them – part of the travelling party...

Once again I looked back at my Poetry Project. I found that some of the images I had started sketching as the project drew to an end, with my FMP in mind, would work well for this brief. On the sketchbook page below you can see shooting keys and miscellanea, I incorporated these into some of my designs for the band...

I also started experimenting with paper cut outs:

he block colour worked well but Milky said the faces in particular were a touch too childish and she really preferred my drawings of them from behind.

Eventually I created a range of digital illustration made by manipulating my own line drawings and hand-made textures. I utilised the aged paper juxtaposed with bright colours of the Persian Miniatures and the printed/vignette technique of Eleanor Davis and Stacy Rozich’s work and applied all this to my own fantastical ideas and Muchuu’s stipulations...

I emailed a wide range of these ideas to the band. Both Milky and George said that they loved the work and added: “ ... the only thing is maybe change the colours of the logo to more darker earthier colours and a bit bigger. My ultimate version of the designs would be logo with new colours, the cat mountain globe and us from the back of heads either side of page. Then if you allow me I would like to use it as our facebook profile pic?”

This I did for them:

Which they said was "Perfect" and they are, indeed, using it as their online display picture for their band profile: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Muchuu/66498558144

They also said “...scrap the whole poster thing. Not needed now. Just ideas and images we can use for internet is cool.”

In this project tried to create images that could be made into poster artwork if needed, but work perfectly well as illustrations in their own right. This approach has clearly paid off with both illustrator and client being very happy with the results.