Dream Theater self titled album discussion - [SPOILER FREE DISCUSSION ONLY]

[Kotowboy]

NO

[?]

Yes, you mean the lines from ANightmareToRemember lining up the image chunklets to form the bigger picture.

FTFY

[BlobVanDam]

Yes, you mean the lines from ANightmareToRemember lining up the image chunklets to form the bigger picture.

FTFY

Damn, missed opportunity there.

[Kotowboy]

Is it supposed to be where the tide has come in ?

[JayOctavarium]

That'd be my guess  ^

[Zydar]

Dare I say it? Lens flare.

[BlobVanDam]

My bad Kotowboy. Sorry.

No idea if they're intentionally or not, although I'll assume they're intentional, as I don't know how they'd get there accidentally. It does look like where the tide has come in, and maybe the dug out Majesty logo is causing more water to pool along the vertical bars causing it to be more wet/dark. Dunno! Looks like a nice effect to me though.

[Kotowboy]

Dare I say it? Lens flare.

[Deve]

Man, he spelled it "Theatre" in the artwork. I know it's not a mistake, but that coupled with the fact the band name isn't going to be on the album cover won't help people spelling it "Dream Theatre" all the time.

Other than that, I really enjoy it.

[theseoafs]

   You're worried that people who buy the album will be misspelling the band name because the word "theatre" appears in the album artwork?

[TheGreatPretender]

You know what, if that's an actual problem, then that would imply that a bunch of people who aren't that familiar with the band are going to be buying this album. Either A: This album will as usual, appeal mainly to the core audience, so the few new fans who happen to misspell the name aren't a big deal.
Or B: This album will be bought by a whole slew of people who don't typically listen to DT, in which case, who cares about mistakes. We should be celebrating the fact that DT is being reached by a wider audience.

I'm betting on A, though.

[BlobVanDam]

I'm guessing the people who care enough to look over the physical artwork in that detail are the kinds of people who know DT well enough to know how to spell their name.

[johncal]

Maybe they purposely misspelled it as a joke because its always misspelled

[Nefarius]

That has nothing to do with spelling. It's the second hit on Google for "stock drive in theatre sign". Pasting ye olde trusty seagull a second time to sit on the frame already took two minutes, so why bother with letter swapping when someone from DTF is bound to complete the job anyway?



By the way I actually like the concept on this one very much. Not a big fan of the execution though.
I'm sure we'll see the last third and thus the bigger picture soon.



Greetings...
Nef

[robwebster]

I wonder if we could make our own art. I mean, not me, everything I draw looks like it's melted, but there's a lot of very talented creatives here. Fun idea! Or not.

Hugh Syme's booklet art is still a little hit and miss, but tends to be better than his covers. Enemy Within's artwork, I thought was dreadful. Goldmine thing looked a little off. This is neat.

If the cover's him (which it almost definitely is), it's probably his best illustration I've seen so far this album cycle. Prob rank this second? From the two thirds we've seen, anyway.

Really lacks a focal point, mind.

Dangit rob, I've already given you a warning for this!
And it is Syme.

Arg! I'm only in my tenth year as a Dream Theater fan, you'd think I'd be able to get their songs' names right by now.

Clearly Syme from the booklet art, but the cover art is a little less steeped in his signature style, so I thought I'd wait for confirmation before outright presuming it was all the same guy - I do own albums where the booklet and the cover are by two different people. Cheers, sir!

My bad Kotowboy. Sorry.

No idea if they're intentionally or not, although I'll assume they're intentional, as I don't know how they'd get there accidentally. It does look like where the tide has come in, and maybe the dug out Majesty logo is causing more water to pool along the vertical bars causing it to be more wet/dark. Dunno! Looks like a nice effect to me though.

I wondered if it might have been from duplicating the texture as it runs down the beach. Like, if there was a darker patch in the texture, maybe it became dark lines when it was repeated? Either way, I like it. It gives the beach shape, depth and perspective. Might've looked like a flat block of colour, without them.

[TheGreatPretender]

I wonder if we could make our own art. I mean, not me, everything I draw looks like it's melted,

Sounds pretty awesome, actually:






But you did bring up an interesting idea. I mean, we've had people here do some pretty awesome fake booklet art, as I recall. Maybe we can have like, more stuff like that. I want to say DT Fan Art, but these days, the term "Fan Art" carries some disturbing connotations for me.

[robwebster]

Yep, that's one of mine - I was trying to draw a kitchen.

[GasparXR]

Yep, that's one of mine - I was trying to draw a kitchen.

I thought you were trying to draw 6:00

[TheGreatPretender]

Yep, that's one of mine - I was trying to draw a kitchen.

I thought you were trying to draw 6:00

Nope, it was definitely a kitchen... Hell's Kitchen, that is!

[BlobVanDam]

Clearly Syme from the booklet art, but the cover art is a little less steeped in his signature style, so I thought I'd wait for confirmation before outright presuming it was all the same guy - I do own albums where the booklet and the cover are by two different people. Cheers, sir!

I know that the cover is also Syme. My word should be enough confirmation!
Plus it would be strange for DT to have Hugh Syme make all of their art since 2005, then ditch him for the cover, but get him to do booklet art.

[robwebster]

It is indeed confirmation - hence "Cheers, sir!" Sozzer, squire, should've been clearer.

When the art was revealed there was no name attached, and it didn't look very Syme, so I thought it'd be best to wait for official verification. Booklet art reeks of Syme, but it was evidence rather than proof. Put the cover artist in less doubt, but I try to keep a very clear boundary between what I think and what I know.

Don't get me wrong, I still fail. A lot. But, personal rule of thumb!

[aprilethereal]

That has nothing to do with spelling. It's the second hit on Google for "stock drive in theatre sign". Pasting ye olde trusty seagull a second time to sit on the frame already took two minutes, so why bother with letter swapping when someone from DTF is bound to complete the job anyway?

oh Syme...

[robwebster]

Again - this is a huge part of what digital art is. This is his medium, and very few people in his genre are going to take their own photos of drive-in signs. Only difference between now and ten years ago is that it's ever easier to find this stuff.

Fine to criticise Hugh Syme for the finished product, but I think it's a bit rich that we have this conversation every two years, where people want to hang him for being this kind of digital artist. It's really not news!

[noxon]

As long as he pays for the artwork he uses, i have no problem with anyone using stock photos as part of their digital creation, especially when it's a composition like this.

[BlobVanDam]

Again - this is a huge part of what digital art is. This is his medium, and very few people in his genre are going to take their own photos of drive-in signs. Only difference between now and ten years ago is that it's ever easier to find this stuff.

Fine to criticise Hugh Syme for the finished product, but I think it's a bit rich that we have this conversation every two years, where people want to hang him for being this kind of digital artist. It's really not news!

I agree.
It's just not practical to set up and take photos for such an array of random elements to compose one image. It's fine if it's for a cover, and it's something that can exist, but when you're putting together surreal scenes like this, it's just too much, and would make it more time consuming and expensive to the point of being impractical for a band like DT to do this every album.

Had you not gone out and searched for the stock image, would it have affected the quality of the final image? Judge the result, not the process. If the most appropriate image of a drive-in sign happens to be one of the first results on Google, then so be it. The real sign happens to use the spelling "theatre". It's not a matter of being easy to fix, it's a matter of whether it was even necessary to change it to begin with.

I could understand the argument for ADTOE, based on the fact that parts of the clown appeared on another prog album cover (although still heavily modified by Syme), but I'm not seeing the issue here.

[robwebster]

Again - this is a huge part of what digital art is. This is his medium, and very few people in his genre are going to take their own photos of drive-in signs. Only difference between now and ten years ago is that it's ever easier to find this stuff.

Fine to criticise Hugh Syme for the finished product, but I think it's a bit rich that we have this conversation every two years, where people want to hang him for being this kind of digital artist. It's really not news!

I agree.
It's just not practical to set up and take photos for such an array of random elements to compose one image. It's fine if it's for a cover, and it's something that can exist, but when you're putting together surreal scenes like this, it's just too much, and would make it more time consuming and expensive to the point of being impractical for a band like DT to do this every album.

Not just every album, but several times every album. This isn't cover art, this is from the booklet!

More power, of course, to those artists who do (or did!) put together such unusual pictures. Storm Thorgerson is a great example of someone who went the extra mile for his covers, and his products were all the better for it - but these are exceptional cases, proper industry legends. Most of the time it's neither practical, nor viable, nor particularly preferable.

[BlobVanDam]

Again - this is a huge part of what digital art is. This is his medium, and very few people in his genre are going to take their own photos of drive-in signs. Only difference between now and ten years ago is that it's ever easier to find this stuff.

Fine to criticise Hugh Syme for the finished product, but I think it's a bit rich that we have this conversation every two years, where people want to hang him for being this kind of digital artist. It's really not news!

I agree.
It's just not practical to set up and take photos for such an array of random elements to compose one image. It's fine if it's for a cover, and it's something that can exist, but when you're putting together surreal scenes like this, it's just too much, and would make it more time consuming and expensive to the point of being impractical for a band like DT to do this every album.

Not just every album, but several times every album. This isn't cover art, this is from the booklet!

More power, of course, to those artists who do (or did!) put together such unusual pictures. Storm Thorgerson is a great example of someone who went the extra mile for his covers, and his products were all the better for it - but these are exceptional cases, proper industry legends. Most of the time it's neither practical, nor viable, nor particularly preferable.

And if you can do it, all the better. But I'm not going to dwell on the fact that Hugh Syme didn't set up his own drive-in theater/re at the beach, and park a classic '50s car in the waves while some kid tends to a 10' Majesty logo. And don't even get me started on getting those seagulls to cooperate.
This is the approach that works best for this style.

[robwebster]

Judging by the kid's footprints, he only just got there, and certainly hasn't moved since he did. Logic dictates that it was probably the seagulls who tended to the ten foot majesty logo. From the air.

These are almost certainly powers way beyond even Storm Thorgerson's ken.

[millahh]

Anyone think the most recent artwork is a reference to Hurricane/Superstorm Sandy?  Seeing iconic '50s imagery out in the surf reminded me immediately of pictures of the aftermath of the storm along the Jersey Shore, with largely intact rollercoasters sticking up 50 yards out in the water (the boardwalks & parks were largely built in the '50s).

[Weymolith]

Just posted today's images.

[Kotowboy]

So ! the Billboard has . . .



. . Nothing on it !

[Kotowboy]

I Wonder if Hugh Syme googled " nothing " and slapped it on the billboard.

[liran95]

I Wonder if Hugh Syme googled " nothing " and slapped it on the billboard.

That is just... cruel 

[King Postwhore]

I Wonder if Hugh Syme googled " nothing " and slapped it on the billboard.

I remember seeing Rush on the Power Window's tour and their bus was parked and on the front of the bus where it tells you the city the bus is traveling to is said, "Nobody Important." 

[aprilethereal]

I expected a song title would be on the billboard, similar to the books in the last image. Seems like that's not the case.