This was done for my Visual Dynamics final.

I got an A on it ^_^

Here's my writeup, if you're interested. At least read the first bit about the story. It's interesting.

Rainy days have always been something magical to me as a child. When it rains, inspiration seems that much closer and I experience this feeling that my ambitions are just at my fingertips, like anything is possible when it rains. I wanted to express this sentiment that rain inspires in me, both through music, fiction, and art. ‘What’ I asked myself ‘would happen if something magical really does happen when it rains?’ and thus was my story born.
When it rains, the border between the Dreaming (a different, extraordinary world that dwells within the human subconscious where anything is) and the waking world is thinner. On days like those, if you know how to look– truly open your mind – you can see the girl with feathered wings singing to the rain. Word is that, if you ask her nicely, she can take you to the Dreaming on angel wings.
This is the story of a blue-eyed girl that stumbled upon an angel singing to the rain, and found herself anywhere but home. Welcome to the Alice-In-Wonderland-reminiscent embrace of the Dreaming.

THE MUSIC:
The music that I write is gothic, symphonic rock, essentially consisting of orchestral support, electric guitars, base, drums, piano, and myself as lead female vocalist. The lyrics and deeper meanings in the songs are characterized with the intellectual darkness of the gothic scene. The melody itself is incredibly agile. While sometimes it is characterized by the grunge intensity of gothic rock, at other times it is an expression of the finesse and range of classical music. Through the combination of these two distinct styles, I am able to tell a story with my music – the story of a young girl’s (mis)adventure into the Dreaming.

COMMUNICATING IT VISUALLY:
The cover’s expression of the story is fairly obvious. Using photo manipulations, I created an image of a girl with angel wings singing to the rain, as is described in the first song, titled “When it Rains”. There are drops of water (symbols for rain though it is not literally raining in the image) and the dark, monochromatic blues mimic the way that rain darkens the world. The colour blue is also associated with water, as well as that melancholy feel (an example of this association is when people say “aw, you’re feeling blue?”. On the back I used an Analogous (as opposed to Monochromatic) colour scheme, which achieves the same affect.
The human subconscious is a chaotic place, and this image is an expression of the twilight zone between the waking world and the Dreaming. The textures I’ve used in the background (bricks, wall with moss, water droplets) are an expression of this teetering between solidity and chaos, the perversion of the urban scape. The viewer gets the gist that it’s an urban scene in the rain, however it is not literally so. In contrast, the girl and the wings are smooth, cut-out shapes with no texture. This is to show that she is an entity not of this world. The contrast of the angel wing itself is furthered by its stark white value because they are a key part of the image as well as a symbol for freedom of earthly cares.
To tell my story, I also used a fair amount of visual symbolism. For example, if you look at the center you could perceive a night sky, a symbol for the infinite and mystical which represents the Dreaming and the endless possibilities of the human subconscious. Circles (a shape which is repeated many times in my design) are also a symbol for the infinite, and are also coupled with rain droplets conceptually. Eyes, such as the one on the back cover, have ever been accredited as ‘the window to the soul’, and in this case it both engages the viewer and serves as a metaphorical window to the Dreaming. Also, it is the girl in the story’s blue eye. The butterfly on the back cover is a symbol of freedom and childish glee, and the fact that blue butterflies don’t exist illustrates how in the Dreaming reality is distorted. The bricks on the front cover are a symbol of restraint, being caged in by reality. The fact that the brick walls are fading into darkness represents the loss of this restraint.

KEEPING VISUAL UNITY:
The various planes of my design are unified by the repetition of shape, colour, value, texture, and line. The low-opacity circles appear often both in the cover and the back cover. The same blue hues are revisited in the front and the back covers, and the same value of darkness is present in aspects of all three planes. The side design is black, the cover fades to black, and the back cover also fades to black and has a black border. This repetition creates unity between the three planes. Texture is also a unifying aspect of this design. It is largely present in the cover, present in one of the sides, and present in the top and bottom of the back cover. Finally, the curvy lines are on every plane of the design and are a strong unifying element.

Want to know what happened to the blue-eyed girl in the Dreaming?