Breakfast in American Redux
by @Marie-Lynn
November 10, 2021
For this assignment I decided to remake an album cover. This is for the assignment āRemix An Album Coverā in the assignment bank, which gives you free choice on however you choose to remake it. This was only a two star assignment and it was fairly simple to do. The hardest part was picking an album to remix. Since Iām old-fashioned when it comes to music, I went through every interesting album I could think of. Originally I wanted to remix Bostonās debut album, but later used it for a remix assignment instead. For this assignment, however, I pulled up and interesting album cover to turn back into a more literal representation of itself: Supertrampās Breakfast in America. Supertramp is one of my favorite bands, and Breakfast in America is one of those albums that is referenced by anyone familiar with them. It has an iconic photograph of a waitress holding a platter with a glass and a menu, much like the Statue of Liberty, while the city of New York is shaped in the background by dishes. I looked at this album and thought, āHey, why not make the waitress literally the Statue of Liberty?ā And thus, I got to work. Iām going to outright admit Iām not good at editing photos, so instead I choose to draw this one by hand using Procreate. The layer feature was a blessing, letting me focus on the waitress before creating the background. Some reference photos to get her general shape in a light shade of blue-green that resembles oxidized copper before creating shadows with a slightly darken color. Since I was drawing it by hand, I opted for a minimalistic approach. Drawing her took the most time and afterwards I made a rough sketch of the New York skyline in the background before coloring it in. I choose a slightly lighter shade of blue to emulate the sky before using the spray-paint tool to create the yellow horizon. I even wrote the name of the band and the album name myself to complete the image. I had to practice writing it a few times before I was happy with the final result. What do you think? Instead of resembling the Statue of Liberty, she is now, quite literally, the State of Liberty. Or a Waitress of Liberty, or something like that. Basically, I broke the metaphor by creating the thing the original album cover was alluding to. Iām quite happy with the result, but have also thought about going back and putting the writing behind her. Please tell me what you think by commenting down below!