I Fight Dragons

Album Art Behind-The-Scenes

Added 2021-06-22 01:01:00 +0000 UTC

Today we've got a look at the creation of the epic album art for Side Quest. We were working with Matt Smith who has done a few stunningly cool pixel art pieces for us (including our most recent 'band picture'), and we started with the idea of Sir Dave (the IFD logo guy) facing down a gigantic dragon. We've never actually had a dragon fight on an IFD cover before, so it feels like it's about time.

We knew the color scheme was going to utilize silver and bronze/copper foil to make it shiny, and so even from the first sketch you can see Matt playing with that idea.

I'm always so fascinated by the visual artist process, and this was no exception. It was so cool to go through rounds of sketching with Matt, and then for him to perform that ridiculous alchemy to turn those sketches into the pixel art glory he's renowned for.

I think I mentioned this in a previous post, but the back panel of the artwork is a bunch of characters from our other album art waiting around while Sir Dave finishes this side quest in the foreground.

Then there's the inside panel, a treasure cave which will ultimately have all of the credits for the album (including the name-in-the-credits and your-voice-on-the-album tiers).

Stay tuned for next week, we've got a special announcement that I think will excite all of you living in a very specific zone encompassing the approximately 1/4 of the US to the south and west of Chicago 😁