Japanese Inspiration in my Works February 22, 2010

This post kind of ties in to my last post about Shibuya. When I was in Shibuya I was with a group of people and some of them had decided to stop at a store and they set a time for the rest of us to meet them. The rest of us decided to wander through the HMV that was nearby. Since I like having and listening to some unique music, I decided to look for a cd from a Japanese band. With no real idea where to start I picked up a demo headset and listened to the different CDs available and ended up finding one that I liked. It was a band with a crazy name, the band was called “Fox Loco Phantom” and the album was “Chaotic Monster”. When I choose music it does not really matter to me if I don’t understand all the words, it is all about the sound for me, if the music sounds good then I like it. The band is a very new band from Tokyo and their sound was really interesting and sort of eclectic so naturally I bought it as I love that kind of thing .

During one of my previous semesters at Algonquin College I had and class in which we learned to use Adobe Illustrator which ended up being one of my favorite programs to use. My final assignment for that class was to redesign the cd case for a music album. In an effort to be unique and be able to design something with a very Japanese feel I chose to redesign the cd case for “Chaotic Monster”. My concept in the design was to use elements of the band and album name to create some Imagery. Below is the concept for the front of the case.

The concept for the front of the case

In the bottom-left corner is a fox mask and the phantom of a monster is seeping out of the hole in the mask. I used red, black, white and different shades of Grey as they match the feel of the music as well as the actual CD case design. So almost each word in the names of the band and album where illustrated literally which I think looks really good. The fox mask illustration was created from scratch and based of a picture I drew. For the monster I first drew the monster and then scanned it and traced it using illustrator. The monster was inspired by a book of Japanese prints that I bought some time ago in which one of the prints depicts a similar looking monster.  I knew also that the fox used to be seen as some kind of mischievous spirit and has a place in Japanese mythology and the Shinto religion. I think the mischievous nature of the fox meshed well with sometimes chaotic sound of some of the songs on the album.  Below is a picture I took of a small shrine part of a larger complex which I visited in the city of Kamakura which is about 2 hours south of Tokyo. There are two small statues of foxes on each side of the shrine.

Shrine with fox statues

When thinking up this design the image of this shrine popped into my mind and was one of the main reasons I chose the imagery of the Fox mask as well as he name of the band of course. The beauty of these places still inspires and has influence many of my other designs. I truly think that it helped find my own style and made it more concrete for me. I will probably be showing more of my own work in future posts and a photo of the final look of the cd case for which I got an mark of 98%.

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