As Ryan mentioned in his last post, when Demon Hunter is not in the studio or on the road, we are busy designing, illustrating and handling art direction. We work primarily in the music industry and have created art for hundreds of bands.
One of the album packages we get asked most is Bleeding Through's The Truth, which I created in 2006. Here's how I pulled it off:
After speaking with singer Brandan Schieppati about the theme behind the album (including the lyrical content and the overarching message the band was conveying), I came up with a concept that I felt was cool enough to pitch to the band. Brandan mentioned to me that while so many bands were attempting to change their sound and message in the hopes of gaining popularity or fame, Bleeding Through was staying true to themselves and their music. To him, this was "The Truth." It's an aggressive record full of rants, tirades and personal vendettas. I immediately wanted to create artwork that embodied this anger. Their deep, dark 'truths' were as black as night and I wanted visually to represent that.
After pitching the idea to the band, I showed them this rough sketch: 
They immediately approved the idea, but they had no idea what they were in for.
Most times, when we pitch concepts we can fully anticipate how we are going to pull it off and what props/shots we'll need to get. For this, we hired our friend Jeff Gros to execute all of the photography and we were able to shoot it in Southern California where Jeff and the band reside. We rented a studio and told the band to be prepared for a long day full of awkward poses, thick goo and animal meat.
Jeff concocted a special goo for the shoot - buckets of red dye and chocolate syrup. We knew that this was all going to be black and white photography, so we weren't worried about the liquid color. We just knew it had to be dark. We also gave Jeff our sketch of each member's composition and asked that he find large masses of styrofoam that he could coat with all kinds of meat: pork, beef, poultry -- you name it, it had to be in there. After pouring the liquid on the meat as well, he shot it all coated along the styrofoam in various perspectives. It turned out perfect.
Next, was the band photography. The members were extremely good sports and allowed Jeff and his crew to pour this liquid all over them while they stood there for 30 to 45 minutes each. Fortunately, there was a shower on the premises and from what I'm told, the goo was pretty hard to get off - some members spent a good chunk of time scrubbing it off. Sorry guys.
I was able to find various color 'before shots' of most band members in their chocolate mess. The rest of the images represent before/after.
While there was a ton of post work -- our job once the photography is finished -- on this project, it went relatively quick and was fun to see come together. This package appeared in numerous design publications and while it may be hard to stomach for a few people, we're pretty proud of it.
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