“Oblivion” by Anthony Gonzalez, Joseph Trapanese, M83

When I first saw the teaser poster for Joseph Kosinski’s second feature film Oblivion, I immediately knew I would design custom covers for its soundtrack. There are certain colour palettes and temperatures, that draw my attention every time, I can’t help it. The score was composed by M83’s Anthony Gonzalez and Joseph Trapanese and has a few standout tracks, e.g. “StarWaves”, which reminds me of John Murphy’s Sunshine. Or “Radiaton Zone”, which features a drum battle(!) between Loic Maurin and Ilan Rubin. Great Stuff! The custom covers fill the whole range from dead easy to damn difficult. My first entry (#1)…

“The Happening” by James Newton Howard

April 5, 2013December 7, 2016 Categories: Custom Covers · Original CoversTags: James Newton Howard · The HappeningLeave a comment

This was more like a contract job. I appreciate the score by James Newton Howard for it’s eerie, menacing athmosphere, but the film he wrote it for – let’s be honest – is crap! Thus the soundtrack has a bitter smack. Nevertheless I stumbled upon a few film wallpapers that offered themselves for custom covers. So I added them to my ever growing to-do-list and tonight I was finally able to complete this task. Each cover needed a bit of tweaking. I cropped out elements to make it fit into the square template (#5), toned down the image with colour-correction…

“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” by Howard Shore

December 31, 2012January 16, 2017 Categories: Custom Covers · Digital Booklets · Original Covers · Singles/EPsTags: An Unexpected Journey · Hobbit · Howard Shore · Lord of the Rings14 Comments

My main reason for looking forward to Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit was all the new music composed by Howard Shore. I even was happy about the fact, that suddenly there should be three movies instead of two – meaning that even more music would be composed and released as soundtracks (and probably Complete Recordings) in the wake of the films. Another fun aspect for me of course, was designing custom covers. Looking back at the fun I had with all the The Lord of the Rings soundtracks and it’s various covers, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the…

“Black Mesa” by Joel Nielsen

September 4, 2012January 16, 2017 Categories: Custom Covers · Original CoversTags: Black Mesa · Half-Life · Joel NielsenLeave a comment

Celebrating the release of the Half-Life 2 stand-alone-mod Black Mesa, I’ve made three custom artworks for you. They’re based on official wallpapers of the mod and the original soundtrack logo layed over it. There may be more later, but I think it turned out quite well for now. The first cover (#1) is inspired by the splash page on the official website, which you can see here – at least until September 14th 2012, when the mod will officially be released. Friggin’ finally! Yay!!

“There Will Be Blood” by Jonny Greenwood

July 23, 2012December 2, 2016 Categories: Custom Covers · Original CoversTags: Jonny Greenwood · There Will Be Blood2 Comments

I don’t remember how often I revamped my custom soundtrack cover (#1) for There Will Be Blood. It were countless times, because I always found a design element in it, which in some way wasn’t perfect. In my first attempt I completely ignored the fact, that it should be a soundtrack cover and just cropped the teaser poster to a square. Then I redesigned it a couple months later by retouching away the billing block and adding album credits instead. Finally, another few years later, I recognized, that I’ve left out the religious metaphor behind the teaser poster design and…