I'm making a cover for web release of chiptune/electropop single. (Very soon it will be available for free downloading. Great music, especially if you like 80's pop.)

I'm closing to the finish and that's what I currently have:


It will be magnified 3x and NPA logo of net-label will be added in one of the corners.

I worked on the piece quite a lot, so I need opinions of fresh eyes and those who already ventured into design of covers:
does it look finished?

Edited by A.B. Lazer - 10 October 2009 at 3:13pm

Thanks!
I was not given any guidelines on logo, but on most releases of the artist features a his 1-bit logo which is pixelly and somewhat bladerunner-esque at the same time. There also is a hand-drawn variant. So I decided to play it safe and just shaded the outline, touched it up a bit and filled insides. Heavier editing haven't made result any better. I made several variants with using my own font, but I'd want to fix artist's original logo/font, - don't know how:




Edited by A.B. Lazer - 11 October 2009 at 4:03pm

Eh, so... I understand that it's better to leave it as is?
What I also wondered about this piece is if it looks empty or not. And if composition looks right.

Edited by A.B. Lazer - 11 October 2009 at 4:35pm

Hey, I really like the trees and the stars. But the Rico looks out of place to me. I think maybe it's all of the colors. Try using one of the variants where there's one color and the outline. I think one of those would look better. (But that's just me)

New variant:

01
Took idea of post-it from Complex's 32x32 entry.

Not shure, however about smile on the fridge - maybe this idea is overused, what you think?


I tried to makelines 1x. The nature of original logo it was meant to be 'pixeled', but not in any special resolution - it was drawn on paper, so when it was scanned and resized, it was very jaggy, as you see in one of previous files, but retaining idea of pixelly look. Better variant is to make such font from scratch, but I had no success so far with it - it is italic and I'm not shure that it is possible at low resolution.

About green - you mean on ly in 'Rico'? I think that palmtrees look good enough.

And one more variant:

02

Edited by A.B. Lazer - 13 October 2009 at 8:10am

I'm gearing towards 2 too - there's more stuff (pineapple!) yet more space (moved snowflakes to top). And handle on the right seems more natural for refrigerator... Oh no, it should be on the left!


02a
That's better. And composition of blue color is less crowdy.

Edited by A.B. Lazer - 13 October 2009 at 1:33pm

Jaggy lines are inevitable when dealing with perspective - closer to horizon sectors become so small that they should be drawn in less than pixel high (so I put the horizon where I put), but when speaking of the sides, I can not just crop them to prevent stretch - and they stretch all the way they can in the corners.

>scrapping the greens from the whole piece

02a nogreen
Hmm...