Magia 1959 La Cienega Los Angeles, CA 90034 Telephone: (310) 838-2999 www.magiamedia.com	HOURLY RATES: Per project. PRIMARY EQUIPMENT: Mac workstations with a Raid 5 file server; Photoshop; Barco monitors; Imacon Flextight Precision II scanner; Two Fujix 4000s for final prints, proofs, portfolio repros; Epson 9600 for art prints, proofing. SPEED OF TURNAROUND: “As much time as our clients give us.”	SAMPLE CLIENTS: Neutrogena, Ciba Vision, Island Records, Warner Bros. Records, Teen magazine, TV Guide, Publicis Agency, Young & Rubicam PRINCIPAL PARTNERS: Alberto Tolot, atolot@magiamedia.com Carlo Dalla Chiesa, carlo@magiamedia.com Drew Glickman, drew@magiamedia.com

THE JOB

	© Dreamworks / photos by Ken Schiles

Dreamworks Records creatives approached Magia in the spring of 2002 to produce the cover for Papa Roach’s lovehatetragedy record. The band and record company wanted an image of a baby rocking out to heavy-metal music on headphones, giving the devil horns sign with one hand and showing a devilish expression that said, “Yeah! Rock and Roll!” Record covers are common projects for Magia, known for its work for such artists as Lenny Kravitz, Jessica Simpson, Gloria Estefan and Mariah Carey.

Magia production director Drew Glickman and retoucher John Crawford started by drop-scanning the 11 x 14-inch original shot by photographer Ken Schles and getting a match print for color. Crawford delved into retouching the image by first concentrating on the headphones and cord. He cleaned the headphones by eliminating the electrical tape on them, cutting out some stray wires, and making the phones fit snugly on the doll’s head.

He then thinned the looped cord in the foreground to make it less obtrusive, a tricky task. “You’ve got that continuous loop in it, which has a highlight running across it,” Crawford explained. “I was getting little chunks of it, shrinking it down and putting it back together using the Transform tool, and afterward dealing with the shadow again.” The hardest part of shrinking the cord was maintaining the doll’s shadow under its leg, which butted against the cord. The task was made easier by Crawford’s Wacom tablet and stylus and his background in illustration.

Next, Crawford removed the doll’s seams at the arm and leg joints, smoothing them over. Crawford then altered the baby’s toes and fingers, for two reasons: one, there was some confusion if the record company had the right to use the doll in the image, so they wanted to change the doll’s features; and two, the band wanted the baby’s hand giving the devil horns.

“Originally they were looking for something a little bit sinister,” Crawford said. “Putting the devil’s horns on was a trial-and- error process of looking through different baby fingers.” Crawford turned to pictures of colleague Drew Glickman’s 2-year-old daughter. Glickman confessed he unsuspectingly used his daughter Kylee as a model one night while she was sleeping: he positioned her fingers in the devil horns position, lightly stepping on her two outstretched fingers to keep them straight, then took some pictures for use as a guide. Crawford explained, “Rather than just trying to draw freehand from scratch, we’d get the image on the screen. We’d use the shape of the finger as a template and then illustrate from there.”

Next, Crawford worked on the baby’s devilish expression, referring to the classic reference book The Artist’s Complete Guide to Facial Expressions. He arched the eyebrows, slanted the eyes, curved the mouth into a slight smirk, deepened the shadow on the cheek, and made its blue eyes brown. To make the hair dark and thick, Crawford imported hair from a picture of the daughter of DreamWorks creative executive Frances Pennington.

About this time, Magia learned that the band’s lead singer, Jacoby Shaddix, had become a father and the band didn’t want a sinister baby after all. Magia then produced an image on the opposite end of the emotional spectrum: i.e., a fat, happy baby. Crawford transformed the baby once again: he opened the doll’s eyes, removed the new teeth, imported a happier mouth from another picture of Kylee. He removed the “Eddie Munster” hair and replaced it with some light fuzz, and fattened the baby’s stomach, legs and head to extend the baby’s skin.

In the end, Magia created a number of possible images for the band to choose from, and the band settled on one that is close to the original, except it’s been digitally cleaned up by Crawford. Oh, they kept one glaring change: the devil horns stayed.

— John Courtmanche