After completing the thumbnails for the Strokes illustration (see previous post), I realized that the majority of them were only of the band or Julian Casablancas posing. Yes, a straightforward idea that had the potential to be illustrated well, but most likely not stick with the viewer. I want to avoid someone looking at it, saying, "oh, nice picture" then moving on to something else. I'd rather stop someone in their tracks to think further about the image they see, even if they interpret something different from what I had imagined.
(materials: pencil and charcoal)
I decided to go with the thumbnail of Julian Casablancas with the Rubik's cube. Sounds strange, but it was the string of ideas I had that lead me to this thought. The album is an interesting blend of their consistent "rock" sound with a twist of eighties pop. The songs vary in the ratio of those sounds, but that's what I generally perceived from the album and the Rolling Stones review. The idea of illustrating the combination of opposite sounds was a challenge I wanted to take on. I did so by emphasizing the "rocker" look of Julian Casablancas (in my opinion, an image that fans of the band are aware of) and the Rubik's cube, a famous puzzle popular in the eighties. I thought it would be interesting to represent the Rubik's cube as a puzzle Casablancas tries to solve in this album; the problem being re-imaging the band without losing their loyal fanbase.
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