dazeblog #2
The Making of vKiSS #2: The Art of vKiSS & “dazegirl”
Before I start I wanna apologize for being THREE months late to following up the last entry, life got mad hectic and I got sidetracked, but I’m back now fr.
A screenshot of the Blender File for vKiSS
Initial Ideas
Due to the “lovey dovey” nature of the music (see: dazeblog #1), I originally wanted to go in a much brighter, much “pinker” direction than the final art; like something along the lines of the “crazy4u!” cover. The average person usually interprets pink & red as colors associated with love & romance & that was what I was really trying to go for.
My manager, Jesse, suggested for a more “nocturnal” cover & after some thought I got to looking for inspiration.
From that point forward, I knew I wanted to make the album’s cover in a “urban” setting. I’ve lived in NYC for almost all my life & something that I’ve always had an odd fascination for…was warehouses.
A picture text of a warehouse, I sent to my manager(s) about a possible reference for the vKiSS cover
I fuck with warehouses, not just for a rave aesthetic but the functionality of a warehouse. A big ass building that could be used for anything, and I mean anything. You can live in them (not ideal but u can), make clothes in them, ship to & from them, etc. I worked in a few of them in my late teen years & 60% of those jobs were cool as shit.
Sidenote: The building with the dA logo on the vKiSS cover, is designed to be a warehouse (note the brick walls & faux shutter door) and that luminescent dA logo is meant to be a ‘futuristic’ take on the graffiti you’d see on them in the city.
Making Dazegirl
Since we’re discussing the creation of the vKiSS cover, I should talk about the character model that appears on the cover, “dazegirl”. Back in Fall 2021, prior to joining deadAir, I created “dazegirl” in VRoid.
Screenshot from my iPhone gallery, 3 photos of dazegirl in blender
I was not doing shit in my 3rd year of college tbh w u, but I made dazegirl and most of vKiSS there lol
My original intention for her design was, essentially, to be a visual representative of my music and a mirror of my interests & aesthetics; or in simpler words, a mascot.
1st iteration of “dazegirl”
I took a few cues from 2010s DeviantArt for her first iteration: green hair, bright purplish eyes, & a fashion almost reminiscent of “Y2K” (I dont like that term but it works here). A couple of the model assets are stock but the hooded jacket & pants were purchased from booth.pm.
2nd iteration, current design
Added netting under the zipper holes in the jeans, changed the iris color & design, and made the green hair more subdued.
While making the character it was a few bullet points that stuck out in my head,
Character has to be black (I’m black, why would I make a representation of my music anything else?)
Character has to stand out (Can’t look like a generic model or look similar to other VRoid mascots)
Character has to be fluid enough, to where each interpretation of dazegirl can be considered dazegirl (like Hatsune Miku)
Lastly, I try to use 2D illustrations of the character as opposed to the 3D VRoid model. The model should serve as a reference and not a one & done.
Using Blender & Final Reflections
So back to the vKiSS cover, I made it over a few weeks in Blender, about 5 weeks before me & dA’s intended vKiSS release date. Using the pic up above as a reference, I tried to model & texture 2 simple buildings. One for the foreground and one as the background. Added an asphalt texture to a rectangular flat plane to simulate the ground in a lot, and some emissive textures & simple glowing shapes to make the cover pop.
Aerial view of the project file
I should note that I am no where near a Blender expert but I’m a top googler. So I started looking up stuff that I felt would make the cover pop, like how to add ground fog, how to use an emission shader, how to make Eevee lighting look more like Cycles using the SSGI plugin, etc. The end result of all these google & youtube searches is the vKiSS cover that we know & love today.
There’s a couple errors in the final art that I let slide off the merit that I was too tired & pressed for time to fix. Like the fail UV editing on the brick wall texture & the unequal dimensions on the shutter door.
One concept that didn’t make the final cover tho, was the idea of making it 2.5D stylized, or in other words a mix of 2D & 3D elements. This would’ve been achieved by having a 2D illustration of dazegirl in place of the 3D render (see the final bullet point from “making dazegirl”). The illustrator I had in mind for that was Seth Redd, who’s also done the mix of 3D & 2D elements extremely well in the past (see his webcomic: Love Sickubus).
However, due to time constraints this concept was never fully realized. But in retrospect, I don’t really think the faults serve as a detriment to how the cover came out. A big thing for me is to always have a hand in every major release cover that I do, usually on the technical & creative end. All of my covers are attempts show where my mind’s at, my perception of the music & my present ability to execute my vision; vKiSS’s cover is no exception and I personally think it’s a great cover on all fronts (from someone who isn’t a graphic designer lol).
