Single cover artwork for an indie rock/pop-punk release

Single cover artwork for an indie rock/pop-punk release Artist: The Second Messenger (thesecondmessenger.com) Song: "Eternity" (working title) Release date: Friday, September 18, 2026 Budget: $100 USD, flat Final art needed by: Friday, September 4, 2026 (initial concept sketch by Aug 26 if possible) I'm attaching the MP3 and the full lyrics. Please listen to it before you reply. If it doesn't move you, or it's not the kind of thing you'd enjoy drawing, no hard feelings at all, skip this one. I'm looking for someone who resonates with the music and feels inspired to create a visual concept for it. So in your proposal, tell me what you thought of it. What image showed up in your head? That's the main thing I'm really judging. No AI-generated artwork please. I make my music by hand and I want the art made by hand too. I'd also like it to visibly look like a human made it, since that's a big part of the appeal for me. Full transparency: the reference images attached below are AI generations. They're just me playing around, trying to get the picture in my head out where someone else could see it. None of them will be used, and I'm not asking you to copy or clean them up. They're mood references, nothing more. Honestly, part of why I'm hiring a person is that those images are missing something I can't quite name. So if your process involves generative AI, this isn't the right gig. I'd just rather say so upfront. The story behind the song: The song is inspired by Hachikō, the Akita in Tokyo who walked his owner to Shibuya Station every morning and met him there every evening. One day in 1925 his owner, Professor Ueno, died at work. Hachikō went back to the station that evening anyway, and every day after that for the next nine years and nine months, until his own death. My song takes that and asks: what if the one waiting couldn't die? So the narrator has been reimagined as a machine. Some kind of android or robot, left at a train station by a woman who told him to stay and then boarded a train and never came back. He's still there ten thousand years later. The station itself is long gone. The trains stopped running centuries ago. He has no idea what happened to her, and he waits anyway. Themes to pull from, in whatever combination you want: devotion past the point of reason, obsolescence, being loved only for your usefulness, deep time, the way nature erases everything humans build, loneliness that isn't self-pitying, hope that has no evidence left to stand on. What the music sounds like, so the visual world matches the audio: 160 BPM pop-punk fused with electronic and techno elements. Fast, high energy, driving distorted guitars, big drums, synth arpeggios, robotic gitchy vocals and vocoder-style harmonies. Energetic but melancholy and eerie underneath. It ends unresolved, on purpose. It doesn't land, it just fades out with him still standing there. Direction (loose): I'm genuinely not married to a concept. I want your interpretation. I'm not a visual artist, and the whole point of hiring you is to get something I couldn't have thought of. That said, since I know some artists like a starting point: Illustration, painting, comic/graphic-novel line work, collage, mixed media, photo-composite, screenprint style, whatever you're strongest at. I care more about it being felt than being any particular medium. Styles that I think would not be a good fit for this song would be hip-hop or trap-style covers, heavy metal / death metal aesthetics (gore, chrome spikes, illegible logos), aggressive edginess in general. This song is sad and strange, not brutal. I lean toward something with atmosphere and a little wonder to it. Beauty in the decay rather than pure grimness. Do not feel obligated to draw a literal robot at a train station if you don't want to. If the song makes you want to paint an empty platform, or a pair of hands, or an hourglass, or something totally abstract, I'm interested. About the attached reference images: these are AI generations I made while trying to picture the song, and they show my own rough idea (a rusted android struggling to stand on a ruined, overgrown platform, ten thousand years of plant growth reclaiming the architecture and the tracks, a faint dying glow in its eyes). To be clear, these will not be used and are not a spec. Treat them as mood only. If you have a better idea, I want the better idea. Two optional things I think are cool 1. Title/artist name built into the image. I love it when the song title or the artist name is part of the environment instead of text dropped on top: carved into stone, a rusted station sign, spelled out in overgrowth, stamped on the machine's chassis, etched on a plaque. Totally optional, but it's the kind of thing that reads as human-made, and it's exactly what AI tends to botch. 2. Working me into the piece. If your concept calls for a human figure, whether that's the android's face, or a silhouette on the platform, I'm happy to be the reference. Just tell me the pose, angle, lighting, and framing you want and I'll shoot it and send it over. Also completely optional. Deliverables 1 final cover, square, 3000 × 3000 px minimum, RGB, delivered as high-quality JPG or PNG (and the layered/source file if you're willing) 1 initial concept sketch or rough for approval before you go to final 1 round of revisions on the final Optional add-ons if your rate allows, tell me what it'd cost: a 16:9 crop for YouTube, a 9:16 vertical version for Spotify Canvas and Stories, and a text-free version Please try to make sure it still reads at 150 × 150 px. Most people will first see this as a tiny thumbnail in Spotify or Apple Music. I think bold shapes and clear contrast beat fine detail. Rights and credit I need the right to use the artwork as the cover on all streaming and download platforms, on my website, in promo and social posts, and on merch and physical copies if this ever gets that far. You keep the right to show it in your own portfolio. And I want to credit you. I plan to name you as the artwork designer on my website and in the release notes wherever the platform allows it, with a link to your portfolio or shop. Let me know how you'd like your name to appear, and tell me if you'd rather not be credited, that's fine too. To apply Your honest reaction to the song, and the image it put in your head. 2 to 3 portfolio pieces you think are relevant. Album/single covers if you've done them, but any illustration or design work is fine. Your timeline. Confirmation that no generative AI will be used. Whether you're okay being publicly credited. Thanks for reading all of this. I know $100 isn't a huge budget, and I'd rather be honest about the scope than waste your time. If the song grabs you, I'd love to see what you'd do with it. Thank you! — Michael, The Second Messenger