Behind The Artworks: Maximum Robot - Away With The Fairies (2026)

For this album, I started with the idea of a fairy on the cover because of the title “Away With The Fairies”. We have previously had a skeleton character on our covers who represents the influence of the undead in our music. This time I wanted to apply some magical wings to turn the skeleton into a fairy and put this supernatural character on some sort of background that looks good. It wasn’t easy. Anybody who has tried to put a fairy on the cover of an album will tell you that it’s hard!

Originally, I wanted some actual little fairies flying around the main skeleton fairy, but it wasn’t practical and would have added insane amounts of time and money to the development of the artwork. Just doing the one skeleton fairy was a nightmare! My first attempt failed miserably. I asked an illustrator in the UK to do something based on a description I gave. He did not get anywhere near anything I felt looked right for the wings, and the skeleton looked pretty weird too. This cost £350 and was not used at all.

I think people should know the enormous costs involved with our fancy artwork so bands can decide if they think it’s worth it. I like great artwork on an album cover, but for some people, it’s not important and certainly not worth the massive costs. Next, I asked a fantastic American illustrator called John Branham to try to make the skeleton. He did all three of our previous album covers, too. I had to pester him with a DM on Instagram to ask him to come out of retirement! He did it for $350, but I insisted on no background and said I would do the wings myself. I just wanted to get the skeleton sorted out. He did a fantastic job as always. In the end, I did the wings myself because I had already spent £630 by that time! I searched for butterfly wings on Google images, found some good ones, then played around with them in Photoshop and stuck them behind John’s skeleton. For the background, I just used the same background from our second album. I was running out of time and money. John then improved the lighting on the wings and background. It was a joint effort, really getting the cover image done.

Next, I got some photos of the band shot on a black background. This was done by a guy I know in Salisbury and cost another £195. Then I sent the cover art and the photos to an amazing graphic designer called Dan Goldsworthy. Dan is brilliant. He did our second album, and I knew he would make this look good! For £420, he laid out the lyrics, illustrated the pages with forest scenes and fairy lights, and put the band logo and album title on the cover. He also did the tray inlay, front and back, including the spines, and put an awesome-looking Celtic pattern on the CD print.

I was delighted with the final results, but it took ages to do, and there was a lot of frustration along the way. The total cost of the artwork was an eye-watering £1,250. I love it, but I’m now very poor. I never want to see a fairy again!

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