AVR Forever (Album, Marketing, & Identity)

"AVR Forever" - the quintessential nerdcore double mixtape by DJ DAX.

Made this logo back in 2013. More on that later, but yes, I decided to stick with it.

This project was quite special given that it started development back in 2013, finally dropping in 2017. It was intended to 1) demonstrate the variety of styles I can execute as a rapper 2) demonstrate the variety of styles that nerdcore can be portrayed in 3) demonstrate that nerdcore can be executed at a high level of quality, both in faithfulness to the source and legitimate production & song writing. AVR Forever was given a unique release, as it was spread out over six weeks, with a new song coming out Monday, Wednesday, Friday of each week.

The cover art reflects the two sides of the project. The tracklist alternates between video game to anime themed songs. This is shown with Yoko Littner of Gurren Lagann on the left side and Samus Aran of Metroid on the right side.

The spirit of the project definitely lies in diversity of sound, visuals, texture, mood, etc. Such is reflected in the cover art, with its array of approaches.

Here are a couple I wanted to specifically point out.

Layering the renders, interweaving different elements - that's where the majority of the fun was.

Acidic, colorful, yet dire. "Rust" is quasi-implied; robot's die and see this.

A vision within the glitch. I enjoy how dreamy this one feels, which is part of the idea, given the romantic subject matter.

I tackled this one with simplicity in mind. Preserving the color scheme was important. The texture on the borders are satisfying.

Went with a pseudo double exposure look here. Still one of my favorite clean looks.

I'm not much of a collage guy. For some reason though, that's what I had in mind when making this. Falls short, but I love what became of it.

For this composition, I grabbed a variety of DBZ background elements, gave a sense of depth, sprinkled grain to remind one of those old airing days.

I made banners that I used on Soundcloud, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.

Keeping in, yet also introducing the scribbles and paper texture was important to teaching the listeners this project's visual language.

Since Week 1 had both sides represented, it was time to show each alone. For the anime week, Sailor Moon was an easy choice (given that she isn't explicitly represented anywhere on the project's tracklist YET I love Sailor Moon, so).

For the video game week, Zelda was chosen given that her franchise ALSO isn't represented on the tracklist. To play opposite to last week's overall bright, happy, clean aesthetic, Week 3 carries visual guilt, organic blurs, bloom, dust, and pain.

Now that both anime and video games have been touched, it was time to show a new take on representing both... here we have an anime character dressed as a video game character. Takane of Idolmaster, "dressed" as Knuckles the Echidna of Sonic the Hedgehog. Doing the text by hand was fun!

Week 5 has last week's idea, naturally, flipped. This time, we have a video game character dressed as an anime character. Neptune of Hyperdimension Neptunia, dressed as Hotaru of Dagashi Kashi.

The scribbles and paper textures from Week 1 are back, bookending the project with an alternate take on the album art.

Actually, the full piece serves as the project's alternate album art (pictured below).

Just like with the official album art, this one features an anime character and a video game character - Matoko Kusanagi of Ghost In The Shell and Misty of Pokemon.

Speaking of alternate art, here's what the project's first drafted album art looked like. Mind you, back in 2013 at least.

I thought it'd be cool to feature a number of franchises - of course, it's not the most readable, but I'm still proud of how front and center the AVR Forever logo is (and how it's executed). Fun fact: each franchise shown had a song on the tracklist, with the Zelda track being the only one shown that was scrapped.

Moving on to the other promotional material...

Here's an example of the visuals given to the songs on YouTube. The paper's there, the scribbles are there.

My favorite thing about this lyric piece is how everything is slightly titled. Ironically makes things uneasy, but hey.

Just like the last piece, I made this back in 2013-14, ish. I was trying out plenty effects on this, but overall, I like the outcome. Still digging the circle HUD around Neptune's waist that reads "anime video game rapper."