Haraldo is a story based around the life of a Norwegian King named Haraldo Magnusson. You journey into the past, back to when Haraldo is playing on the streets in his hometown Bodo, with his best friend, Danny Devito. Haraldo is a member of the Magnusson family that rules the Northern Kingdom in Norway while Danny is a member of the Devito family that rules the Southern Kingdom. Although their royal claim for power stirred up natural competition between the two boys, they valued each other's friendship and treated each other as brothers. However, when Haraldo's elder brother, the current King Regnor, is assassinated, all the evidence points towards Danny. Upon Danny's return from retrieving aid for Regnor, he is accused of the crime and flees from the scene. The assassination of the King by one of the royal families of Norway caused heavy unrest throughout the country leading to the first civil war in the nation's history. The war results in the ousting of the Devito family and the banishment of Danny from Norway. Many years later, Danny makes a return to his home country against the wishes of King Haraldo. Danny gains support from the people and leads an attack on the capital city, breaching its walls and invading the royal palace to confront Haraldo.
The color scheme for the book jacket is red, white and blue for the colors of the Norwegian flag. On the front cover, you see a close up of Haraldo's face and on the back cover, you see a close up of Danny's face. I added trees and stars on the back cover to represent the journey that Danny Devito had to go through to reach Bodo, from hiding in the woods to traveling in the dark of the night.
For my surrealism piece, I thought it would be a cool idea to make an image where a knife is stabbed into a solid object. I took a photo of a knife stuck into the side of a tree and blended it into the rock. The image is of a knife that is stabbed into a rock and the rock is shattered. I thought this was a cool idea because people don’t usually stab objects like rocks because they can’t really be broken in that way. In the image, the rock is shattered and the knife is in perfect condition when you would normally expect the opposite situation where the knife is shattered and the rock is intact. The rock and its shattered pieces give a nice texture to the image while the knife gives depth and makes it look more three dimensional.
For this piece, I used Photoshop to do HDR photography. By fusing 5 different photos of a tree, I got a uniquely textured image. I then used the liquify tool to mix it up and give it an unfamiliar look. Then, by changing the saturation of the image, it added a nice blue and green color to the image making it more lively. I used the color replacement tool on the knife and the rocks to give it a black and white look. Finally, I meshed the the rock and the background together using the brush tool.