Continua Metamorfosis

First post of 2013!!! And boy, is it fitting :)


There's a contest going on at Creative Allies to make a poster for Tristan Pretymann. When I read the full description of the album and the way the title had been selected from it, I immediately felt a personal connection to it all. Me, I've just been through a series of harsh, rough changes and trials that I expect would eventually lead me to the same rebirth. So I was automatically drawn to the project.

I started sketching and arrived to the final idea a while ago, but a series of already hinted to events turned this into an actual revelation, almost magical!!!

My proposal features a woman who's going through an alchemical process of metamorphosis. Alchemy, or the Art of Transformation, is defined by Alejandro Jodorowsky as "Alquimia es la materialización del espíritu, al mismo tiempo que la espirilituación de la materia.", meaning "Alchemy is the materialization of Spirit, at the same time as the spiritualization of Mather." Hence, I turned around the alchemical symbol of transformation - the triangle - to turn it into an internal, spiritual transformation, making it coincide with the notions of meditation that speak of taking the material inwards to attain spirituality and reach an inner conscience.

Also, the cocoon and the butterfly go beyond the obvious cliché. At first I was trying to avoid it, but while doing some research I found out that the term chrysalis (the pupal stage of butterflies, often mistaken with the cocoon) is derived from the metallic gold-coloration found in the pupae of many butterflies, referred to by the Greek term χρυσός (chrysós) for gold. Not only that: the cocoon itself, apparently, is what binds and makes the butterfly struggle in a perfect amount of time in order to perfect the process: the most difficult, apparently painful part of the process is what brings beauty and flight to it's body.

All in all, my goal was to achieve a simple yet striking and poetic poster that encapsulated the concept behind the album, the title and the music, without losing coherence with the line already dictated by the album. I'm really happy with the final result. This is it - if you like it, feel free to vote for it at Creative Allies - even though the final call lies with the artist. Let's hope she likes it too! :D