I collaborated with Phil Borst and created something that I think is very cinematic or Hollywood, something that prepares you and lets you know… the movie you are about to watch will be of cinematic magic.

Inspired by the greats like 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, and New Line Cinema, here is Milkman Max Productions. I composed the music, design the logo and Phil Borst did the animation/motion work…

I had the pleasure to work on the design and retouching of the new Sucre album. Sucre is Stacey King of Eisley, Darren King of MuteMath, and my dear friend Jeremy Larson – I’ve been working with Jeremy designing every single one of his album covers and websites since the start of his professional career.

I had a blast working with the three of Sucre developing the look and feel for what the art and branding was going to look like. To make things easy I collaborated with the wonderful photographer, blogger and Jeremy’s wife Elsie Larson who took all the photos for the project.

Below I wanted to share some of the process of the retouching I did for some of the photography to give it the “Sucré” touch that brought everything together. We decided on the cover photo first (see below) then wanted the rest of the photos to go along with. I barely touched the cover photo, Elsie did such a FANTASTIC job.

I wanted this to be a timeless cover that could sit next to anything else out there that isn’t currently on shelves but also that spanes across decades. I created over 20 or so concepts for the cover ranging from water colors splashed across the cover photo, colored shapes overlayed on the photo, hand drawn birds sketched across the photograph etc. but it was TOO much. Less is more. SO I did what I thought best and came up with a clean and classic album cover. A simple sans-serif font of the band name across the bottom of the photograph…

The other photos that Elsie took were just as amazing but they didn’t fit the vibe of the cover. So I had a challenge. I decided to go for this magenta, sugary, kind of feel for the rest of the art so that it fit the cover’s magic.

Below you will see the transformation I take these photos in Photoshop in a Step By Step process. If you have any questions on what was done specifically just leave a comment I’d be happy to explain!

The making of the cover of When We Were Young single…

Inside photograph of A Minor Bird…

If you haven’t had a chance to listen to Sucre yet, do it NOW. It is refreshing to hear well written pop music that’s been classically arranged that is accompanied by beautiful female lead vocals. Timeless albums like this do not come out very often.

I created a Sucre desktop wallpaper that you can download for FREE based on unused concepts developed for the album cover. Click the image below for a high-res 1920×1200 wallpaper!

Right click HERE on this link and “Save Link As…” to download.

My recent video I directed and wrote music for. I love how this all turned out. The shots took on a sort of vintage wash to them that I didn’t think would happen, in which I love.

For the music… the main melody is a felt piano with counter twinkle melody by the celeste. I bring in a warm pad of french horns as the glue for the orchestra of cello, violoas, and violins. As the ground for the whole thing are pizzicato double basses that worked perfectly for editing the video.

Exploring more into cinematography I shot one of my first studio lit films. I approached it exactly like I would with a still fashion shoot. One hard key light very similar to how I shoot most of my editorial cover shoots. I did some “Washed Out” color grading to it and did some fun edits – really satisfied with how this turned out.

Shot on a Canon 5D MKII with a 50mm f/1.8 lens with continuos studio lighting.

I am VERY excited about film right now and will continue to push myself in this direction. Have a look…

I also wrote the music for this video and will be for all of the series. Take a look…