Video boy design researchFor Production we were told to come up with both a character and an album cover for the purpose of Andy Mallen (M.boy) and his new album titled “Video boy”. For the album we began working on temporary album covers in order to gain experience and practice with software's such as Photoshop and PowerPoint for when we come to designing the actual album for Video boy. As well as this we also jotted down ideas for the character of Video boy, we had to include the name as well as relate the design to the album as much as we could.

Character research• For the purpose of the character I wanted to produce something that

seemed to relate to the the name Video Boy. I began researching a number of ideas such as clothing ideas, character shape and posture for the purpose of the finished album.

• On of my main sources of research was “Shin Tanaka” which is a Japanese paper craft toy website. I chose to look into this website for my character as it offered various designs for characters that were interesting yet had an appealing look about them that I thought many young viewers would find interesting. Many of the characters have an urban quality to them. Meaning that they are designed and/or dressed so that they have street wise features such as graffiti textured art on their clothes or fashion that reflected that of people who live in estate areas.

Album cover design research• For the purpose of the album cover I wanted

something that was striking, effective yet had a simple quality about it that wouldn’t make it too complex to view. I chose to have it relate to the character by having the same colour scheme and design concept as the character. I also planned on having it relate to things such as film strips and video cassettes as they seem to relate to the word “Video”.

Designing the character• The character has a similar quality to that of the Shin Tanaka toys

but at the same time as a rather personal quality of my own. I chose to have similar clothing ideas to that of Shin Tanaka but I also decided to include features that related to the word Video. I gave my character a film strip scarf as well as a bag filled with Video cassettes that are labeled with different types of music as it is also related to music also. I gave my character an iPod which was attached to its belt which had a huge wire which drooped by his side which had a rather creative feature to it. For the character shape I chose not to have standard body shapes but gave the body a peculiar shaped head, chest and legs which had a cartoonish like look about it yet also a similar styled look to that of Shin Tanaka art work.