In March of 2021, I checked off a major bucketlist item: commissioned art for an album cover!
But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let’s talk about the musician. I was commissioned by the incomparable Andrew “Zircon” Aversa, electronica musician and contemporary of mine; whose music I also greatly enjoy. Andrew placed some feelers out on Twitter if any artist would like to help on his 8th album – and I jumped at the chance to make “practical” art.
That said, I wanted to go above and beyond just a standard .jpg as a deliverable. Since I’ve been an ardent champion of virtual reality, I proposed a cover made in Google Tilt Brush (a VR 3D modeling tool I’ve used before) that his audience could actually inhabit. The idea was enthusiastically greenlit and I spent about 1 month inside my Valve Index VR headset listening to his music and crafting a Lilliputian world.
The process was as amazing as my feelings for the end result, and as near as I can figure, nobody else has made a Virtual Reality album cover before or since. Zircon’s 8th Album, Arcology, is slated to come out later this year.
