A few years back, we had the pleasure of working with DC-area Norteño band Los Ilegales de Lempira on their album, “Tequila y Bucana.” In addition to recording the album here at ULS, I also did the photography and graphic design for the project. We’ve added a new piece of artwork commemorating their work here at ULS.
As I wrote in an earlier blog post, towards the end of their time recording with us here at ULS, the band’s leader, Misael Pineda, asked me if I would be interested in doing the graphic design for their album. I love doing album design artwork and layouts, so I happily said yes. Misael gave me a couple of examples of the kinds of “looks” that other bands in their genres typically go for in their album designs — usually full-body shots of each of the band members against some kind of a background image. The band projects a sort of glorified, stylized agrarian theme in their music and their “look”, with cowboy hats and boots. Since we’d be shooting their photos against a green screen, we could put them up against whatever background they liked. Given the image they were going for, I suggested making a group photo of the whole band standing in a line, rendered as if they were photographed in an old-time, rustic barn.
The background for this image was created using a 3D rendering. Since the band were only photographed with a regular camera (that is, in 2D), they are technically “flat” images in the composite. But I added a little extra shading in front of their feet to better sell the illusion that they were actually three dimensional figures in the scene. I really liked the way this image turned out. The background has a very believable amount of detail, and it feels like the band were actually photographed as a group, rather than just one at a time in front of the green screen.
It’s definitely my favorite piece of artwork I did on this project.
I like the idea of having memorabilia up on the walls commemorating various projects we’ve done here at ULS. This album wasn’t necessarily the most complicated project I’ve worked on musically, but since I had a chance to not only record this band but also to do their artwork, I thought it’d be fun to have a piece of art from the project up in our “gallery.” So I had a framed print of this image made.
It now hangs in the hallway at the top of the stairs going down to the studio. A cool reminder of a very fun, unusual project here at ULS!
