Monkey Island Soundtracks – Album Covers

[BillyCheers]

Like most people here…

 

I love Monkey Island for its amazing music!

And since I like to have everything in order (🤓), I've created consistent covers for my Apple Music library (using the great visuals from Laserschwert). 

I'm already pretty happy with these versions - but not 100% yet. I am therefore very open to alternative suggestions.

 

[Update: For the sake of overview I have moved the downloads to "Imgur" and replaced them with an index here.]]

 

 

Links to the cover downloads

 

All album covers with framing – Version 1:

https://imgur.com/a/B0CWRVe

 

All album covers with framing – Version 2 (as seen in overview image):

https://imgur.com/a/e55iyw0

 

Alternate covers for MI1, MI2 and MI4 with "original" framing:

https://imgur.com/a/UBFgqNE

 

Alternate covers – with logo, without framing:

https://imgur.com/a/uKNk6ee

 

The artworks without logo or framing:
https://imgur.com/a/9jMgeMy

 

 

 

Disclaimer:
For the sake of the sorting, I have decided against the more beautiful CMIs and ReMIs of this world and reduced it to MI1 - MI6 ("Threewood. Guybrush Threepwood…").

 

(If I have unnecessarily opened a new topic here, although this can be wonderfully integrated elsewhere, then sorry.)

 

Edited July 10, 2022 by BillyCheers

[Thrik]

Those are good! I like your alternate take on the borders.

[BillyCheers]

Thanks!

 

I reworked the framed covers a bit: In an alternate version, I cut the framing at the bottom to let the characters stand out a bit more. I personally like that one better, so I put this as my favorite in an overview JPG. 

 

I also fixed a mistake I made on the MI2 covers (the logo was wrong...).

 

The links are all updated in the first post at the top.

[Lagomorph01]

Wow! These are really nicely done! I agree with what Thrik said about the borders, the way the characters pop out gives them a lot of depth!

 

The only thing feedback I'd like to give, if it's welcome, is about the COMI cover. Guybrush is dangling a bit too much out of center in the bottom left. Maybe you can nudge the image a bit to the right? Or you could make the image a bit smaller and make the logo cover more of LeChuck's hat and sword (that information is less important then Guybrush.)

[BillyCheers]

2 hours ago, Lagomorph01 said:

Wow! These are really nicely done! I agree with what Thrik said about the borders, the way the characters pop out gives them a lot of depth!

 

The only thing feedback I'd like to give, if it's welcome, is about the COMI cover. Guybrush is dangling a bit too much out of center in the bottom left. Maybe you can nudge the image a bit to the right? Or you could make the image a bit smaller and make the logo cover more of LeChuck's hat and sword (that information is less important then Guybrush.)

 

Thanks! Feedback is always welcome.

And it's a good point – I added a bit of background on the left and put him more in the middle.

Edited May 31, 2022 by BillyCheers

[Lagomorph01]

Wow! That’s a great improvement! Thank you!

[Romão]

I love that you made a cover for The "Cursed" version of the Secret of Monkey Island soundtrack, I've always felt that was worthy of its own release.

 

What's the best source for the high quality music files? I'd like to make cd's of all the soundtracks. Stan's Previously Owned Soundtracks?

Edited June 3, 2022 by Romão

[AndywinXp]

8 hours ago, Romão said:

I love that you made a cover for The "Cursed" version of the Secret of Monkey Island soundtrack, I've always felt that was worthy of its own release.

 

What's the best source for the high quality music files? I'd like to make cd's of all the soundtracks. Stan's Previously Owned Soundtracls?

Thanks for the nice words about the Cursed soundtrack but I should really find some time to remix it and rerecord some drum and guitar parts... Jeez those are old

[BillyCheers]

Oh, you made the Cursed version, @AndywinXp? Very nice! I love it and listen to it a lot. Of course I had to make a cover for it. 🥰
I haven't noticed anything negative about it (drums or guitar), but I don't have a great ear for such things... To me they sound perfect.

 

@Romão, although I don't listen to CDs anymore, I'd love to see the CD covers, when they are ready! (If you need help or anything, I'd be glad too, of course). I love the idea to make them under the label "Stan's Previously Owned Soundtracks" btw. 😅

Edited June 2, 2022 by BillyCheers

[Scummbuddy]

@BillyCheersThen you may not know what they were referring to: https://m.youtube.com/c/gangreneofthesoul-StansPreviouslyOwnedSountracks/

[BillyCheers]

7 minutes ago, Scummbuddy said:

@BillyCheersThen you may not know what they were referring to: https://m.youtube.com/c/gangreneofthesoul-StansPreviouslyOwnedSountracks/

Aaaah, obviously I wasn't. Thanks for the link! I'll look into it.

[Romão]

15 hours ago, AndywinXp said:

Thanks for the nice words about the Cursed soundtrack but I should really find some time to remix it and rerecord some drum and guitar parts... Jeez those are old

 

 

it's my favorite version of the Secret of Monkey Island soundtrack, that as highly as I think of it. Would love you would take a similar approach to MI2's soundtrack, although I know, of course, it would be a much more massive undertaking

[Romão]

14 hours ago, BillyCheers said:

Oh, you made the Cursed version, @AndywinXp? Very nice! I love it and listen to it a lot. Of course I had to make a cover for it. 🥰
I haven't noticed anything negative about it (drums or guitar), but I don't have a great ear for such things... To me they sound perfect.

 

@Romão, although I don't listen to CDs anymore, I'd love to see the CD covers, when they are ready! (If you need help or anything, I'd be glad too, of course). I love the idea to make them under the label "Stan's Previously Owned Soundtracks" btw. 😅

 

 

I absolutely love your covers, Since you mentioned your abandonment of the cd format, I don't expect you will be doing back covers with track lists and whatnot, will you?

 

The covers really do look very nice

[BillyCheers]

Thank you very much! 😀

 

1 hour ago, Romão said:

I don't expect you will be doing back covers with track lists and whatnot, will you?

 

I dunno, maybe... It was fun to make these, even if it was more work than I thought (my Photoshop skills aren't as good as they used to be ). The resolution would have to be higher for printing, I guess. I could start to make one for one game and check how much time/work it takes. 🙃

 

Personally, I don't listen to CDs anymore. I either listen digitally or via vinyl records. I've even thought/dreamed about making the soundtracks or a collection of the best track on vinyl (with cover and everything) - but that's unfortunately probably quite expensive... 😅

[Lechuck]

Thanks for these, these are awesome!

[AndywinXp]

8 hours ago, Romão said:

 

 

it's my favorite version of the Secret of Monkey Island soundtrack, that as highly as I think of it. Would love you would take a similar approach to MI2's soundtrack, although I know, of course, it would be a much more massive undertaking

 

Ah the issue with MI2 is the duration of the OST, I unfortunately don't have time to re-perform all 2 hours of music, not mentioning all those iMUSE transitions...

 

Also, thanks for all these kind words, I really do appreciate that!

Edited June 3, 2022 by AndywinXp

[Jake]

@AndywinXp did you do the “Cursed!” albums for the first two Tales of MI episodes too? I still listen to them sometimes.

[AndywinXp]

2 hours ago, Jake said:

@AndywinXp did you do the “Cursed!” albums for the first two Tales of MI episodes too? I still listen to them sometimes.

Haha, no I didn't, I literally lifted the "Cursed" name and the idea from there though 😛

[Jake]

Damn! Yours is also great, but I always hope that person will one day go back to it. 

[BillyCheers]

First of all, I was totally surprised when I found out here that there are actually “Cursed” soundtracks to Tales (why didn't I know that?!). Then I also noticed that the same person did a couple of MI2 tracks in Cursed style as well. This is amazing! ❤️

So naturally I did some covers for those soundtracks too (downloads are in the first post):

Now to the idea of CD covers with a backside… As an experiment I did this one for MI2:

Except for a few details, I already like it pretty much.

 

 

However, there are two "problems" in general:
First, the resolution of some images is unfortunately not always as high as the artworks done by @Laserschwert. This is already visible in some of digital album covers (e.g. the "Cursed" for TMI) and it’ll be of course even more noticeable in print. Unfortunately, I don't know anything about upscaling or anything like that, so I don't know how time-consuming and effective that can be in the end.
The second thing are the tracklists. Except for MI1, they are extremely long and don't really fit on the back side (at least if you list every track). If they are necessary, I’d put them in a booklet.

@Romão, making these things is actually a lot of fun, but it's also a lot of work. So I don't know how long it will take (and if I'll stick with it). But I'd like to keep working on it if you' re still interested in them.
 

Edited June 7, 2022 by BillyCheers

[Marius]

Wow, I never heard the cursed SoMI soundtrack. It's great @AndywinXp!

[Laserschwert]

Regarding track listings, for my old soundtrack covers I used the inside of the front cover as a mini booklet to include them:

 

 

Granted, the design is roughly 2 decades old, so I would probably make them a bit nicer today.

[BillyCheers]

19 minutes ago, Laserschwert said:

Regarding track listings, for my old soundtrack covers I used the inside of the front cover as a mini booklet to include them:

 

 

Granted, the design is roughly 2 decades old, so I would probably make them a bit nicer today.

 

I was trying with some artwork first – but that's always a bit tricky in combination with text (these are of course very, very rough tests):

  

 

My next thought was something like your layouts... in style of the CMI parchments maybe. Dunno. I guess it would be quite some work, to find the right images etc. 😅

Edited June 7, 2022 by BillyCheers

[Rum Rogers]

Holy shit, stellar work @BillyCheers! WOW. I wish I had those when I uploaded the vids for Stan's Previously Owned Soundtrack. Absolutely fantastic stuff, kudos!

[OzzieMonkey]

7 minutes ago, Rum Rogers said:

Holy shit, stellar work @BillyCheers! WOW. I wish I had those when I uploaded the vids for Stan's Previously Owned Soundtrack. Absolutely fantastic stuff, kudos!

Wait, that's you?! I've gone to that channel so many times over the years to get a quick fix of the soundtracks