Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Album System

Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots is a concept album about Yoshimi, a girl battling cancer. This is a pink sci fi soft album system for a pink psychedelic soft rock album.  I took inspiration from the original cover by Wayne Coyne for the soft and round shapes of the robot character designs. I also took influence from medical equipment, like MRI machines, for the surrounding robots. There are cells constantly moving in and out of the ‘robot instruction manual comic’ lyric insert, and the vinyl labels resemble the UFO Yoshimi is standing on. 

The process of creating this system relied heavily on the initial phase of sketches. I listened to the album while making watercolor sketches. I took pictures of the ones that resonated most and made a cleaner sketch with space for hand lettering and a derived color palette with Procreate. After printing out that sketch, I traced and inked it traditionally on 11 x 17 bristol. The hand lettering was printed, traced, and inked separately. I scanned everything, colored, and assembled it with the rest of the words using Procreate and Illustrator.

The labels and lyric insert were based on what already existed within the cover. For the lyric insert, I took a sequential approach and planned out the comic panels and text using Illustrator, printed it out, and inked the 'comic' boxes traditionally. The labels were sketched in Procreate and hand lettered traditionally with pen and ink, then scanned in and colored with Procreate. 

Album System for Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots by The Flaming Lips. Includes LP cover, motion cover, Side A and B labels, and a double sided lyric insert. Pen and ink, Procreate, Photoshop, Illustrator. Hand lettering and font Stone Cold Fox by Kern Club. 2024.