AIO Article: The Art of AIO 7/12/12

     Before I start my Article, I would like to say that The U.S.S. Response has been quite successful. In fact, Wooton Basset from The Unofficial AIO Blog contacted me and asked me if he could do a U.S.S. Response page for his blog too! I was flattered and of course I said yes, so now both Wooton and I have U.S.S. Response pages. I was quite impressed with his U.S.S. Response, so check that out on The Unofficial AIO Blog! And now, for my article.
    
     AIO has had many, many albums. 55, in fact. All of them have had album art, sometimes by Bruce Day, and sometimes Gary Locke. I am here today to discuss the various stages of album art during AIO, from the Bruce Day days to the repacks.
     In AIO's early days, it wasn't Adventures in Odyssey, it was Odyssey USA.
     

 
     There wasn't much art in the beginning, just a crude picture of Whit's End, but Odyssey USA was renamed Adventures in Odyssey and the artwork improved. AIO hired Bruce Day and he made some rough, early 1900's style art. Here's a picture of a very different Eugene, where you can actually see his eyes, done by Bruce Day:

     Yeah, Eugene looks weird, doesn't he? And the Whit in the background looks more like the new Whit. That's just another way AIO has gone back to its roots. Another classic Bruce Day image is Whit unveiling the IS.
 
     This image is a little blurry, but you can still tell that Bruce Day was the kind of radio drama artist who would do things the classic way: rough, crude, with bizarre drawings and not a huge attention to detail. AIO's choice in artist may have been good in the 1980's, but in today's day and age, these pictures look old-fashioned. But then AIO hired Gary Locke.









     Frankly, I'm not quite sure if Gary Locke did the illustrations for Flights of Imagination, considering it doesn't look like his work. But even if he didn't, I'd like to talk about the album art from volumes 16 - 20. It still has that old-fashioned feel, but it's not, in my opinion, quite as good as the Bruce Day art. 16 is in the traditional 1 - 15 style, meaning that it has a bunch of different scenes from several episodes. But you can this is not Bruce Day. There's a problem with volumes 17, 18, and 19. They have no scenes from actual episodes. 17 has a - rock. 18 has Whit's desk, and 19 - I don't even know what all those things are on the original album art. 20 was quite an improvement, but 21 is the best album art yet. Maybe it's because when Hal died, the Odyssey team wanted to get everything perfect. But whatever it was, I loved the Album 21 art.
     Years later, in Album 36 - everything changed. The art became more cartoonish, and, in a way, better for that time period. I loved the art work for Album 36, and I'm glad AIO kept it up.
    

     As you can see, it's a lot better. For a while, Odyssey stayed on track. They kept up the cartoonish album art and didn't change anything big, aside from redoing Albums 1 - 15 for The Gold Audio Series. Then, in 2007, an advancement shattered album art news as we know it. This advancement, of course, was, the repack.

     A Journey of Choices was the first album to be repacked, and it looked a loooot better. I love the new CD's, where it only shows the episodes and the logo, but what excited everyone was all the new album art. It was pretty ambitious for AIO to redesign Albums 16 - 35 completely. But Gary Locke did a spectacular job. I love the new repacks, and I hope they continue.
     But where are we now when it comes to album art? There have been a few new repacks and a change in character art, so advancements in the AIO art world are not completely nil. But AIO has never focused too much on art anyway, so we shouldn't expect some big, huge advancement.
     Overall, AIO has improved over the years when it comes to art, and I hope to see some more good cover art for 57+.
    
     So, did you enjoy the article? If so, comment! And don't forget to check out Wooton Basset's U.S.S. Response page! Thanks for reading!