In January 2015, the band known as 2814 released their second album, Birth of a New Day, a seminal work that ignited the Dreampunk subgenre of Vaporwave music. Equally popular was the album art, influencing artists around the world to adopt the neon dreampunk style.
Recently, graphic designer Gustavo Torres, better known as Kidmograph, reimagined this music and cover art for a modern audience in an NFT series. Launched on Nifty Gateway, the limited and open collections were snapped up by artists and collectors.
We also chatted with Torres, the Argentinian artist behind the album’s original artwork, to learn more about his process. Here’s what he told us about transforming the Cinema 4D artwork he created for the album into NFT, using new features from C4D and the GPU power of Redshift.
What led to the creation of dreampunk and the cover for your album 2814?
Torres: I started the tumblr Kidmograph account in 2012 when I started working as a freelance. As the blog grew in popularity, I was able to start finding work and working with a lot of musicians. Band 2814 contacted me through the blog, and I already knew their music and was a huge fan.
They are actually a duo and have solo projects Hong Kong Express and Telepath テ レ パ シ ー 能力 者. These were the musicians who really livened up the scene with the Dream Catalog label. When we first met they wanted to create the now iconic cover art for their second album Birth of a New Day. This visual look was booming at the time and it had a bit of an abstract side mixed with the dreampunk movement they had created. The original illustration really resonated with people, it was used in many YouTube playlists and vaporwave collections.
Dreampunk evokes this vast city and this dystopia where you feel alone even if you are surrounded by people. Dreamwave is synonymous with melancholy. It’s not exactly nostalgic, but it does encompass the feeling of remembering moments in life. It’s like trying to find a specific moment, an inner search of sorts. We wanted to translate this into the artwork.
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