In September 2015, Metal Hammer were tasked with creating a 3D lenticular to go alongside a print package celebrating the new Iron Maiden release, The Book Of Souls, as well as creating an equally impressive iPad edition cover video.
Below you can see the evolution of the layouts of the cover. The artwork lent itself perfectly to achieving a good part of the 3D effect. We also had Mark Wilkinson the artist for Iron Maiden add further details to the final artwork, adding in the vines behind Eddie, as well as more blood up front. I then had to make a massive layered PSD with all of our final artworks and position things perfectly so as to get the most out of it. It's when you know what's not visible in the PSD could be visible when you 3D it.
Working closely with Matt Hounsom at Pixelwrench, to come up with a brief that could be fleshed out to create an iPad cover to match the 3D cover. In essence, mirroring the lavish print edition. Our exploding rock logo, jungle scene and a specially built 3D render of Iron Maiden's iconic mascot, Eddie, featured in the artwork. We then were able to add 3D motion and depth to the character to give the feel of him pushing out towards the viewer. Much like the print edition, you want the reader to feel like they’re in the scene.
The plan (for all Hammer ipad covers) is to use the cover treatment as an online teaser via social media - this is to promote both the print and digital versions. The post for the video on our Metal Hammer Facebook page alone has a reach of 1.8 million. Iron Maiden also shared this with their own Facebook following of 14 million. This was echoed on both our Twitter (392,000) and Instagram (40,000) accounts.
