ABOUT

Concept:

Indie Rock band, Ease Springs approached me with an ambitious project to launch their upcoming album, 'Who is Leonard Bopper?', which was released in May of 2013.

The lead singer, Steve Hernaman, had written a short story, inspired by the songs from the album and his interest in avantgarde American detective novels of the 40s and 50s. He wanted an illustration for the album's front cover depicting a climactic scene from this story, in the style of a graphic novel.

The artwork would also be used to create the basis for a serialised website, a new chapter of the story to be released each week over the course of 2 months, with animated imagery, finally linking to the album itself.

This website and the album launch party were then to be marketed to fans and subscribers via email and promoted on Google and Facebook, as well as popular music publications.

Execution:

To create the illustration, I sourced a number of photographic images, arranging them to build an initial montage. Using this as a template, I created the line art of the illustration in Adobe Illustrator, moving over to Photoshop for the colouring process.

This artwork was then applied to the album cover, front, back and rear tray, as well as a 12-page booklet, focusing in on various close-ups for each track / page.

These 'scenes' also formed the basis of the website's pages. Each element of the illustration was kept independent, so that it could be isolated and animated, using CSS coding to move these elements around the window, zoom in or out, blur and fade, as needed, creating a short animation for each page of the website's story, as it unfolded. I worked with a web developer and programmer on this aspect of the project, contributing some coding, but primarily art-directing the scene animations and page layout.

The marketing of this project was a key aspect, involving the creation of multiple assets, from Google (AdWords) and Facebook ads, targeting potential fans, to a series of 3 monthly advertisements in NME and Melody maker, as well as over a dozen emails, using the Mail Chimp email marketing platform.

I also produced flyers and posters distributed by the band and their management company, Lizard King, at live performances and various other outlets throughout the build-up of the marketing campaign leading to the album launch gig / party at The Water Rats, London.

Result:

As well as causing quite a stir among the band's current fanbase community, the campaign produced a significant increase in the number of new subscribers to Ease Springs' mailing list, which led to several hundred pre-orders and sales of their new album. The launch event was a huge success, selling out the venue, with over 200 attendees and garnering the attention of industry A & R.

The animated website and story was heralded as being "... an engaging new interpretation on the theme of the concept album, a welcome addition to the phenomenon which has been neglected in recent years." The album itself receive good reviews and the online sales, as well as the success of the marketing campaign enabled the band to secure a number of high profile gigs in the following months.