The female group IVE has released the cover of their fourth Japanese mini-album, Lucid Dream, and has broken all expectations. Instead of simple typography, they have turned to horror manga master Junji Ito to create a black-and-white illustration. The image shows the members alongside their MINIVE pets, but with an unsettling style: elongated lines, blank expressions, and a gothic atmosphere that clashes with the polished aesthetic of traditional K-pop.
The technical process behind a high-definition visual nightmare 🎨
The collaboration required a specific digitization and color adjustment process. The original pastel tones of the MINIVE were desaturated using editing software to achieve Junji's characteristic black and white. Texture layers and vector shading were used to replicate the artist's ink strokes, maintaining the necessary resolution for CD format printing and streaming platforms. The result is an image that, technically, looks like a frame from Uzumaki but with idols inside.
When your plush toys look like they came out of a curse 🧸
The MINIVE, those adorable plushies that fans collect in pastel tones, now look as if they survived a 90s Japanese horror movie. Someone at the agency must have thought: why not put Wonyoung with a blank expression while her rabbit looks possessed? It's a risky move: fans will buy the album, but they might not be able to sleep with their MINIVE in the same room. That said, the nightmare merchandise will sell just the same.