Here’s Demon Hunter singer and Invisible Creature designer Ryan Clark talking about the new art work he and created for The Showdown’s new album Back Breaker.
Continuing with the theme of our every-so-often design blogs, I’ve got something hot off the press (actually, it hasn’t even been printed yet) to show you.
I started working on the artwork for The Showdown’s new record, Back Breaker just before leaving on tour this Summer. The Greek-mythology-themed song titles instantly drew me to a concept that I pitched to the band, which went something like this:
“Here’s what I’m thinking, guys: Photo-based. A ridiculously huge (buff) guy (in his 20s or 30s) standing in a dark, outdoor environment… Wearing somewhat old Greek looking garb, although not way over-the-top… Something subtle… Bare chested, dirty and bloody, standing in a menacing (but somewhat casual) pose… Dozens of arrows have penetrated his skin around his chest, shoulders and arms.. but he stands there, completely unaffected by it. He has no weapon or anything like that, just some form of inhuman resilience.”
The reason that I even pitched this idea was because I knew there was a good chance I could get access to someone that was crazy built. A few weeks prior, a friend of mine had mentioned that he had been working out with some real-deal body builders. After the band approved the idea, I got in touch with this friend, asked him if he’d spread the word to some of his body builder friends, and within a few days we had someone interested in helping us out.
The model’s name is Mark Dugdale. He has graced the cover of Muscle & Fitness and was named 2004’s Mr. USA. He was perfect for this artwork — mainly because he’s pretty much the hugest dude I’ve ever seen.
As soon as we worked out all the details, I enlisted the help of IC photog-favorite, Jerad Knudson to shoot the images for the artwork.
We shot the arrows separate from the rest, because I knew it would be a lot easier to place them in post instead of figure out a way to actually stick them on (or in) Mark. We shot them sticking into a Styrofoam ball on a white background, which made them easy to extract.
Everyone involved did a killer job, and I was very pleased with how everything turned out. Here’s the final cover. Buy the album to see the rest of the images!
