CD cover: T.O.B.I.A.S.

A hiphop musician named T.O.B.I.A.S. asked for his album cover to be "something simple and good" that would play on the album title, Magyver (sic)-- "like music equipment, mics, speakers and stuff".

He sent this photo to use, which had a great background and lighting, but was unfortunately out of focus.



I was really stumped with what to do with this. So I started by fiddling with his photo and accidentally applying a Stamp filter to it in Photoshop, which unexpectedly looked great. For the "MacGyver" effect I added some ramshackle clipart of speakers, music equipment, buildings, etc, and gave his name a funky 3D effect. I ended up sending four different concepts, but the first sketch -- the one he chose -- was done within half an hour of opening Photoshop. Sometimes these things just fall together right off the bat.