Jedi Mind Tricks Album Illustrations

The Funeral and the Raven

This was the final install of the 3 album artwork link, a very loose link, but still linked. Again, I was given only the title of the album, but this time it came along with a general style direction and color palette. I loved the darker theme, one of the sources for inspiration was Edgar Allen Poe, so we had a good mix of ideas coming to mind right away. I went with a rather obvious choice for the cover, but we made the raven a strong focal point by being in the foreground of the moonlight, with the roses on the table and skull being the only other eye catching elements - we wanted this cover to be less “busy” than the previous 2 releases. For the back cover, we intentionally split the image so that the group of hooded figures looks like they are walking towards the table, but far enough away to not bleed onto the cover art, as well as stand alone as its own image.

When opened, the inside panels reveal a viking funeral with a burning boat, and the audience of hooded figures in attendance watching from the riverbank. This scene was described to me as needing to be symbolic to “the closing of a chapter” for the previous 2 albums, which is why the burning boat felt appropriate. Overall, I love the direction we took this one, keeping its own image while also paying homage to the nature scenes, mysterious figures, and the included elements of demise (skulls mean bad, right?).

The Bridge and the Abyss

This was the second album that JMT came to me with, I was asked to create illustrations based off of the album title, and came up with the concept of the woman being the guardian of the bridge to the abyss. The cover is from the perspective of travelers (shown on the inside panels) approaching the bridge in a jungle, and then the view changes as the album is opened, to show the travelers going across the bridge, into the black abyss.

The Brief

I had previously worked with JMT on a similar project (below), so I had some prior knowledge of their workflow and what was expected of me. Being given just the title was about as basic of a description as you can ask for, but with a little bit of discussion, throwing ideas and sketches back and forth, we landed upon the jungle scene that became the final piece. The content was entirely up to me, I took a lot of references from whatever jungle or forest imagery I could find, started looking at different types of rope bridges, had my wife pose for the reference shot on the cover, and used myself as reference photos for the figures walking across the bridge. This was to be an indirect continuation of the previous album I had done for them (the Thief and the Fallen), as in a similar concept of a character symbolizing life (the women), a nature scene, and death. After doing the first one in blues and purples, we turned towards warmth for the color palette, along with natural greens and browns to compliment the scene.

The Thief and the Fallen

This project was very exciting. I was approached by the guys in JMT to do the illustrations for their new album, The Thief and the Fallen. This project was to be centered around the album title, and they mostly let me run with it. The layout work was done in collaboration with my friend Dan Bradley, which only added to the fun of this project. JMT were great to work with and we are all very happy with how it came out and the response.

The Brief

This was the first project that I had worked with JMT on, and it was a bit of a feeling out process between the artist and myself. I was given the name of the album, but not a direction of what to do with the canvas other than a loose concept that it should reflect the artwork of John Dyer Baizley, who happened to be one of my biggest inspirations at the time (and still is!). I loved the idea of mashing metal art concepts with the hip hop scene, and immediately went to work sketching out ideas. Eventually we landed on this forest scene, where I took the scene in a more surreal direction with the oversized birds roaming the forest with human bones scattered about. The idea was that man was lured into the forest by mother nature, and was eventually lost to the elements, with her watching over him as he decays. The rest of the artwork follows this timeline, with the middle pages and back cover art showing the full skeleton, and other victims of the forest.