Richard Manning

Bruce Dickinson Skunkworks 1995

This was shot in Scotland. The tree was positioned after being driven around on a flatbed truck, looking for the right location. Heavily retouched in Photoshop working to a tracing that I scanned in and positioned. It's a play on the town in Essex, Braintree. The original shape can be seen in the reflection and a lot of adding individual leaves and modifying the outer brain shape was necessary to achieve what Storm needed. Peter Curzon stood over me for some time to approve what I was doing. Once happy with the shape, I put a guide line just to the edge of the island and with the Rectangular Marquee tool set at 0 feather scrolled down the image from the left hand edge then came across to the guide. I made a Layer of this section, flipped it horizontally and dragged it to the right hand side. I brought the image up to four hundred percent to see individual pixels and positioned the layer exactly as a mirror image.(This process was used for all the band members to achieve mirrored images of the left side of their faces.) One or two changes were made to each side of the main image. A rock removed here a piece of grass removed there, the sapling in the background with red leaves has been reduced and a number of other differences.

Hipgnosis Album Art