Behind the scenes: The evolution of the SLARPG OST's album cover!

With the Super Lesbian Animal RPG soundtrack getting a physical release via Turtle Pals Tapes, I thought now would be a great time to look at the evolution of the album art! Today I'll be going over the MANY unused ideas we had for the cover, as well as the process for the final art.

This post will contain some spoilers for the back half of the game.

Early placeholders

Early on, I made two different placeholders riffing on Gorillaz album covers, because that's an easy thing to do when you have a group of four characters. I made one based on Demon Days as well as one based on Humanz (their new album at the time), and the latter stuck around as the placeholder art throughout development.

These were never going to be used publicly. I just needed something for my iTunes library, since I listened to the WIP tracks a lot throughout development as a personal motivator. There were many, many late nights spent listening to the earliest versions of TRANS // FORM and Homecoming from all the way back in 2016, daydreaming about the day when I'd finally finish the story.

The demo OST

In 2018, we knew the full game and its soundtrack would still be a ways away - although we had no idea just how far off they would actually be. Naturally, we decided it would be for the best if the demo got its own soundtrack release.

In an effort to save time, I decided to try whipping something up using existing assets for the demo OST's cover art - which will become a recurring theme.

My first attempt was this, using Melody's selfie from the demo's intro. The runes, appropriately, read "THE FUN IS ONLY JUST BEGINNING." I liked the visual symbolism of this one, with a time capsule of Melody's normal life before the start of the game enclosed in a magical pentagram, signifying the way her life is about to be turned on its head.

We decided to go for something else for the final version, though:

This cover prominently features the classic Final Fantasy-style "overworld" sprites for the party, in a 2x2 arrangement inspired by the earlier Gorillaz-esque placeholder covers. It also retains the runes and the subtle space texture from the previous concept to spice it up a bit more.

I believe at this point I already knew that the overworld seen in early screenshots would be cut in favor of directly connecting the different areas to each other, but either way, there was no overworld in the demo. We just thought this would be a fun use for the sprites. I also like the way the demo OST cover uses these simpler sprites instead of their proper sprites or a full illustration. It feels appropriate for a rough preview version of the soundtrack.

The full OST - early ideas

Come late 2022, both the game and its soundtrack were being finished and prepared for release. It was time to start thinking about proper album art.

Initially, we assumed that the OST would be released within days of the game's launch. Considering I was launching a game and also coloring a 12-page prologue comic at the time, there was no way in hell I was going to have the time or energy to draw something nice for an album cover. I was running on fumes. We did discuss commissioning an artist to do a cover, but nothing ever really came of that.

So, preparing for the worst case scenario, we started brainstorming possibilities for album covers that repurposed existing assets.

First up was one based on a mockup from Bee, featuring the title in huge letters and the Novas embedded within. We actually considered just using this format and getting an artist to draw new art of the Novas to replace the recycled art, but obviously this isn't what ended up happening.

Next was an idea involving the party's silhouettes, with colors inspired by their Astral Plane sprites. I just had to get this idea out of my head to realize that I actually hated it. Part of the idea was to portray how "small" Melody feels compared to her friends, in terms of her confidence in her abilities, but eh. I just don't like it.

The giant, looming Jodie silhouette in the back is very funny, though.

Continuing with the idea of emphasizing the Astral Plane colors, I tried a set of vertical columns that would give the character art more room to breathe, and stylized them with a rainbow effect over their lineart. The bars do, in fact, kind of evoke Black Flag, although I can't remember how intentional that was. I wanna say the use of just the lineart for the characters was inspired by the Eureka Seven OST covers.

I iterated on this general idea A LOT, but never really loved the result, so I kept trying other things.

Having already played around with the the drawings of the party from the game's main key art a lot, I decided to just try doing different stylized takes on the whole group shot with all four of them all together. I think the one on the right here is my favorite of all these experiments, but we kept experimenting.

Returning to her first idea with the big text, Bee suggested: what if we flipped it turn-ways?

This did resolve the problem of not having enough room for the characters, although poor Jodie was never going to have much space with only three letters to call home. I tried two different layouts to see which was more readable. Had the soundtrack been released in December as initially planned, I wanna say the one on the left is what we would have went with.

Of course, with time running out, I had to also suggest the obvious route: just using the cover art for the game with the words "original soundtrack" slapped on. It would've been the most boring option, but it was an option nonetheless.

The delay and the final cover

Bee was working on mixing, mastering, and exporting the in-game soundtrack practically right up until release, so it didn't particularly come as a surprise when it turned out she'd need more time to finalize the album. While we would've liked to release it sooner, delaying it to January meant that I now had plenty of time to draw an actual album cover myself.

Ideas included:

• The Novas playing instruments as a rock band (I always like OST/arranged album covers that do this)
• Melody and Allison listening to music together - although how exactly you would give them headphones would be a problem
• A shot of the dock scene from the end of Act I, with Melody and Allison pictured from behind and the moons up above
• A bulletin board collage of images, scenes, and characters from the game, inspired in part by the Kirby Super Star main menu
• A landscape shot of the Sapphire Islands with the Novas in the foreground, enclosed in a circle with the text "SUPER LESBIAN ANIMAL RPG" wrapped around it. (This one was Bee's idea)
• And, of course, as a joke, I had to recommend just doing Weezer's Blue Album cover with the Novas

However, the idea that stuck was one inspired by an illustration from a certain lore dump scene from the game:

The idea was essentially to do the same thing with Melody and the Novas. The emphasis would be on an explosion of colorful patterns as a representation of magic in general, inspired by the stylized look of magic spells in SLARPG's battles. I also went for a lineless style with flat coloring to differentiate the cover from all of SLARPG's normal art and make it feel more special.

I knew from the start that I wanted this cover to have no text. I've always loved that sort of album cover that's just a really evocative image with no title or artist name. (In the digital age, that stuff's already in the metadata, and even looking at a physical copy you can just check the spine.) The First Glass Beach Album, Endless Fantasy by Anamanaguchi, Time 'n' Place by Kero Kero Bonito, Modern Closure by 4mat, etc. I love that shit. Wait, I'm just now realizing that the obvious comparison would be Dark Side of the Moon. Yeah, EAT IT Roger Waters! My fox girl can make WAY cooler rainbows than your lousy triangle!!!!!!!!!!

My initial sketch was very flat in the posing of the characters, making them just kind of form a rectangle of furries in the corner of the image. To really make sure it looked dynamic, I went the extra mile and busted out some Clip Studio 3D reference mannequins to get everything juuuust right with a higher angle shot.

My initial take gave the magic effects hard edges to match the art of the characters. However, Bee liked the rough, chalky texture of the magic in the original Verena illustration and suggested I apply that. This was a good call! I like the way the precise geometric patterns contrast with the imperfect edges.

And so we come to the final cover:

As a symbolic representation of the entire story, Melody is basically opening Pandora's Box with her magic. She never could have predicted the impact of her decision to learn magic, just like how the simple act of introducing magic to Reverie 1013 years ago had massive repercussions. The Novas are dwarfed in the composition by the magic itself, pushed into the corner together and shown from a disempowering high angle, making the magic both intimidating and awe-inspiring. But ultimately this magic is a thing of beauty bringing color to the featureless white void of a background. The void is also partially standing in for what Javis tried to do to the world, resetting it to a blank canvas, and how Melody's magic saved it.

Beyond its ties to the story and its themes, the variety of colorful patterns bursting out of Melody's spell also sort of represents the variety of the soundtrack itself, which features a ton of different styles and genres over the course of its beefy runtime. It's a hard album to capture the vibe of with a cover, but I think I did a pretty decent job.

Also you can see Melody's widdle fangs which is the most important part

It was a long road to get to this point, but I'm extremely proud of this cover. It's one of my favorite things I've ever drawn.

...Of course, said cover was done entirely in RGB, assuming that a physical release would be a remote possibility to worry about another day. So some of the colors here - particularly Melody's signature mint green - are too saturated to work in CMYK without some fiddling. Oops! It's still gonna look great in print, though. Trust me.

Speaking of which, I need to get back to work on the final artwork for the vinyls and CDs. Did you know those need a lot of art assets? Because they do. Perhaps some day in the future I'll do another post like this about all that artwork.