Lexer — The First Last Day Album Artwork

Briefing

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This Never Happened reached out to me about working on the art direction, design, and visualisers for Lexer's 'The First Last Day' album.

We created a series of colourful and intricate fractal floral designs which used insect wings, bird feathers, leaves and scales. 

Lexer's inspiration for the album was finding colour in a world so repetitive and regimented, brought dark by the pandemic. Using his music as a way to return to the joy of life, and writing music became his escape.

Getting Conceptual

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The iridescence of feathers, and the scales of a butterfly or insect wings became a great symbol of how colour would reveal itself through a change of perspective, a recurring theme in the art direction phase.

Research & Development

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Nesting cloners in Cinema 4D to create fractal wing patterns which revealed themselves outwards created the base for me to clone the feathers.

Cloning the feathers, wings, scales, and leaves onto the wings using effectors to orient them along the contours of the wing geometry. Making sure to follow a more natural rule of wing design.

Finally, revealing the complexity and depth of the floral designs through a multi-light setup in Redshift, and using a highly reflective iridescent material which would shimmer and change colour based on the angle you view it at.

Motion

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Simulating growth and timelapses of flowers growing in a looping pattern which pulse and dance to the beat of the music.

Outcome

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Hosted on the This Never Happened YouTube channel, the album and singles recieved over 350k views on YouTube, and 1.5 million streams on Spotify in the first year.