Songs in images

POSTED BY: PhoenixRose
UPDATED: Thursday, January 18, 2007 13:16
VIEWED: 15059
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PHOENIXROSE

Tuesday, May 30, 2006 10:29 AM

So one of my hobbies is photoshopping pictures into images that are reminiscent of songs I like that have good imagery. Well, I realized I haven't made a new one for awhile, possibly because I've not been inspired by a song lately.
So, just as an idea, I thought I'd ask you shiny folks if you have any favorite songs with imagery that you could suggest. Absolutely no guarantee I'll be able to do anything with it (particularly if I've never heard the song) but if I do I'll post it here.
Here are the songs I've done so far:
"Broadway" by the Goo Goo Dolls
"Building a Mystery" by Sarah McLachlan
"Eye of the Hurricane" by David Wilcox (I don't expect many people to recognize this one)
"Fat-Bottomed Girls" by Queen
"Fields of Gold" by Sting
"Imaginary" by Evanescence
"Liquid Diamonds" by Tori Amos
"Oblivion" by Thiry Seconds to Mars
"Rain" by Madonna
"River of Love" by Richie Sambora
"Rock You Like a Hurricane" by the Scorpions
"Serene Dream" by the Kidneythieves
"Sky" by Ra
"Sleeping Sun" by Nightwish
"You Can Still be Free" by Savage Garden
I'm uploading these to my photobucket album at the moment, so if anyone has an overwhelming desire to see any of them I can link them

So... any ideas?

**********************************

CHYNNAPRINCESS

Tuesday, May 30, 2006 1:00 PM

I'd like to see them.

PHOENIXROSE

Tuesday, May 30, 2006 1:07 PM

All of them? Ok, they're pretty big, so be warned.
You might want to turn your resolution up to view them fully, in fact.
You might also have to right click "show picture" on some of them if they don't load the first time.
Mild disclaimer: I don't own any of the source images I used, just put them together for fun.

Here is Imaginary:

Here is Fat-Bottomed Girls:

Here is Liquid Diamonds:

Building a Mystery:

Fields of Gold:

Sleeping Sun:

Rock You Like a Hurricane:

Sky:

Rain:

Broadway:

Serene Dream:

Oblivion:

You Can Still be Free:

River of Love:

I won't link Eye of the Hurricane just yet because it is the biggest.

**********************************

PHOENIXROSE

Tuesday, May 30, 2006 3:01 PM

Anyone there?

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DAYVE

Tuesday, May 30, 2006 3:32 PM

i'm here....
You do very fine works.... I really like them all.
Just noticing the type of music you choose, i was wondering if you have listened to Imogen Heap... i've just discovered her myself, and from your list of artists, i think you might like her, too.

Keep up the great work... i'll be on the lookout for more...

dc

PHOENIXROSE

Tuesday, May 30, 2006 3:57 PM

Thank you
No, I haven't listened to Imogen Heap. I'm very picky about my female artists, but I'll certainly check her out. Trying to listen to somethin' off her website now; the download is all splotchy.

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DAYVE

Tuesday, May 30, 2006 4:11 PM

that's true...
if you can find 'Hide and Seek'... it's worth a listen, my favorite, actually...

NEEDY

Tuesday, May 30, 2006 4:37 PM

I love them!
Certain song lyrics conjure up images in my mind, or remind me of a tv show (The line in Ozzy Osbourne's song Dreamer "If only we could all find Serenity" obviously reminds me of Firefly/Serenity), but I would never have thought to make an art image based on a song - so thats pretty smart of you to think of it

(though having said that,I have done a wallpaper for an original story I was writing, and had an idea - but never got round to - doing one for another story)

MY favourite images you've done are "Imaginary" - perfectly captures it; "Liquid Diamonds" - don't know the song, but its a beautiful piece; and "Sleeping Sun" - cos it just looks so stunning
Have you ever thought about featuring lyrics on the art too, or do you think that would spoil it?

I can't think of any songs to suggest at the minute, but have you thought about letting your imagination run wild and take a piece of classical music or movie score, and make a picture from that - just the images it conveys, without lyrics?

-----
Needy. Male Companion:
First Boy Whore of Destiny
Incredibly Confused Companion of SereniTree
-----
www.myspace.com/needsalt
http://needsalt.livejournal.com/

PHOENIXROSE

Tuesday, May 30, 2006 4:49 PM

Thank you, NEEDY
No, I never thought of putting the lyrics in the image, with one exception, because I thought it might spoil the flow. The first image I ever did for "Sky" was all painted in Photoshop and I had lyrics going through it on a diagonal. I can't show you exactly what it looked like since this forum automatically takes away spaces, so here it is with dots instead of just blank space:
And
..The
....Sky
......Will
.........Tell
............Me

.............I'm
...............Not
.................The
...................Only
......................One

Like that. Most others, I just tried to capture the feel of the lyrics. It's usually just a phrase, or the chorus, sometimes just the title, though with a few I feel like I've captured the whole song. Or close, anyway. I could try to tell you what phrases the images came from, maybe... It'd take awhile.
Interesting idea to use instrumental music. Since most of my inspiration comes from lyrics, I don't know how well I'd do. If I get anything from pure instrumental, it's usually just swirls of color; nothing all that specific.
I'd like to see your wallpaper!

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PHOENIXROSE

Tuesday, May 30, 2006 5:42 PM

My attempt to describe my process, for any who are interested.
Imaginary was an easy one. "In my field of paper flowers and candy clouds of lullaby, I lie inside myself for hours and watch my purple sky fly over me." The hard part was finding the proper picture of Amy Lee; I got lucky and found one of her lying on a beach, so I isolated her and moved her into a field of flowers, then put in the sky.
The line "Fat-bottomed girls you make the rockin world go 'round" inspired the girl twirling around with the earth as her bottom. Of course I had to put Freddie in there, too.
The Liquid Diamonds picture is almost a direct image of just the title. To date, it's the one that took me the longest. The background was put under a filter so the mountains looked diamond-like, and the lake is actually a picture of raw diamonds that I used the liquify tool on. Then it was a matter of finding drop-shaped gems, isolating them, and pasting them in... Over and over and over and over and over... You get the idea. I got very lucky with the picture of Tori Amos; her skin had a sheen to it that almost looked like she'd been dusted with diamond water. But no particular line of the song inspired the image; it would be almost impossible to directly translate her lyrics into images. It could be done, but I'd have to find a lot of pictures that I so far have never run across.
Building a Mystery was one that was suggested to me. I mostly drew from the line "You live in a church where you sleep with voodoo dolls" and the feel of it being a love song. So a sleeping man, I added the voodoo doll and the picture of the angel on the wall, then put in a heart made up of stars and the picture of Sarah McLachlan over the window, which turned out lovely because it looks like she's watching over him.
Fields of Gold has always been one of my favorite songs because my mom used to play it all the time. The concept of a "jealous sky" intrigued me, and when I came across a picture of a bright sun in a sky that had a greenish tint, it was almost too perfect. Finding really golden grain was difficult, and I had to clone most of the field of gold off a tiny picture. I would have liked to have figures walking in it, but couldn't manage it.
When I first heard "Sleeping Sun" I thought the title was "Eclipse" because my friend had gotten the title wrong. But when I thought about it, an eclipse is kind of like a sleeping sun, and I liked the image. It's a gorgeous song, and I wanted to give it a nighttime feel since the artist is Nightwish. So I replaced the moon in a nighttime scene with a wonderful eclipse picture I found in which the moon was very clear. Any picture of Tarja Turunen is of course beautiful, but this one was one of my favorites. She has a very ethereal voice, so I wanted her to be a tad transparent, overlying the scene.
Rock You Like a Hurricane is rather self-explanitory. I couldn't find a decent image of the Scorpions, to I used the album cover for "Love at First Sting" which worked well. I also found a guitar called the Scorpion and thought it was about the coolest thing ever, so I added it, twisting it so it fit the hurricane spiral. The heart-shaped hurricane has always been one of my favorite things; I found it on a photoshopping site, and it fits the song perfectly.
"Sky" was a hard one, so of course it turned out simple. I've always loved the band and that song in particular. They're pretty hard-rocking, and I thought a red sky fit well. I wanted to have them in more a walking pose rather than standing there under the sky, but it's pretty hard to find good pictures of those guys. I recomend looking up the lyrics to this song.
"Rain" was fun. The lines I mostly used were "Your love's coming down like rain" and "I'm gonna stand out here on the mountain-top til I feel your rain". I really wanted the figure on the cliff to be Madonna, but couldn't find the right picture for it. I was lucky in finding the picture of the heart in the clouds, and almost made myself crazy isolating the droplets to rain out of it.
"Broadway is dark tonight" open

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