This is the album art for Summoning Suit, the 2024 album by Snakeskin. I created the artwork through a combination of photography, 3D rendering, graphic design, and illustration by Snake from Snakeskin. I'll share a little bit about how it came together and some of the decision-making that inspired the project.
The Concept
Summoning Suit is a concept album depicting a surreal journey of discovery in which Snake seeks out a suit of armor as a mysterious antagonist, Magic Man, attempts to ensnare her. The fantasy storytelling could be seen as a way of interpreting one's journey through the confounding and troubled real world. We all seek strength, we all seek to gather the pieces and the resources we need to be ready for what comes ahead. The "summoning" of Summoning Suit could be the act of going on the journey itself.
My album art moves in this direction. On the front cover, Snake is surrounded by shards of the Summoning Suit, a suit of armor I sculpted myself, which appears as a mystical fire surrounding Snake. The black letter font, which I designed myself, is a nod to the fantastical aspects of the story. White lines form a cube illusion, making the square vinyl appear to have depth. On the reverse side, this depth is exaggerated even further and framed by a vortex of swirling lines. I was thinking of "falling through the rabbit hole," as in Alice and Wonderland. On the bottom of the back cover, I've included the label LSF-02, as the story of this concept album is a continuation of the Legend Sound Forever series that began with 2021's Heart Orb Bone EP, and a Memento Mori. I love that Memento Moris encourages people to handle and explore the print in 3D space physically. This one requires one to hold the album nearly straight on to view the skull in its proper aspect ratio.
Above: the front and back cover. Below: the cover, album, and insert sleeve with lyrics.
The Vinyl Labels
The vinyl labels feature artwork illustrated by Snake. She drew these scenes as part of the concept phase for the visual album. I think they're so beautiful and evocative. They are abstract enough to allow the imagination to build upon them and, at the same time, well defined from textural and color perspectives.
One valuable aesthetic concept I have latched onto for years is that art is more interesting when its different parts point in different directions. Given that the cover art is a digital, 3D-rendered illustration, I think the inclusion of hand-drawn illustrations adds complexity to the album artwork and makes it more compelling. Like the music, the album is a collision of different aesthetic impulses. I think the result is more memorable for it.
Some Process Snapshots
I'll share a few images of the making process below.
Using Gravity Sketch and Blender to Arrange the Cover Art
First, I wanted to show how the 3D images on the cover are composed. As I mentioned earlier, the shards on the cover are taken from the Summoning Suit itself. To do this, I imported the model into Gravity Sketch, the VR 3D modeling program that I originally sculpted the suit in, and rearranged the pieces by hand. I then sent this draft composition into blender to complete my final renders.
Experimenting with AI
Early in the process of creating the album artwork I used Runway's Gen-2 image to video model to ideate about effects I could do to my Summoning Suit compositions. Below you'll see one example image of this ideation. I ultimately did not move ahead with this concept as I felt the image quality wasn't up to my standards.
Typography
I created my own hand-written black letter font for Summoning Suit. I've never created a font before. I wouldn't exactly say that I really created one for this project either, but what I did do was digitize my hand-drawn lettering into reusable letters that I rearranged for the titles of the album cover and the visual album. It was a lot of fun and allowed me to bring some physicality and materiality into the project. Without the hand-drawn font, I think the art would have felt incomplete.
Wrapping Up
Thank you for checking out my write-up about Summoning Suit's album cover design. I loved making this and put a lot of thought and effort into every aspect of the design. This album's printing was more basic than my design for Heart Orb Bone, with its screen-printed inks and holographic stickers, so I put a lot of thought into how I could make the art itself feel more physical. I would love to hear any thoughts or reactions to my work. Thank you!
