Part 5 Words and Pictures Exercise 1: Your Own Work

 

Reviewing my sketchbooks and past work I have picked out a few of my favourites and described what I liked about each. I then decided to pick the dog, it really is my favourite piece and I though it would be perfect to produce as a children’s book. I love the imagination in children’s books, the colours, characters, and storylines. I immediately wanted to write down everything I could do in the book with the character, give it a personality possibly introducing other characters.

I did some rough planning and came up with a cute story, perfect concept to make the book interactive to with flaps to lift and move. For my character I turned to Instagram once again using the same dog I did for the original painting cause the owner takes great photos of him. I did some different angles; full body poses just to proportion things and get an idea. I also collaged a little girl to tell the story of her ‘greedy’ dog.

 

Once I thought of a storyline, I listed the items and the main elements of the story as my idea was that items were going missing, and the little girl assumes the dog is eating everything cause her belly’s gotten big. So, establishing the items I then chose what part of the scenery on the pages were going to be interactive, then got to writing the text and story.

Using pieces of card folding them twice and cutting them into two pages and put them all together creating a mini book. I then counted the pages and sorted the storyline to each. Next was the visual storyboard which was of the rooms and environments also point to what parts pop up or lift. I experimented with a few of the colours on things like the walls or floor just to see what colours looked best together.

Creating these environments, I googled a few cartoon layouts of rooms and a garden and used this as inspiration whilst being aware of needing space and good placement for the interactive features.

 

 Dog references

After this I began drawing on the mini book pages.

 (This little prototype is to be painted in acrylic for vibrancy and text had yet to be postioned as well as the flaps thats will be lifted up.)

In addition to this book design I also toyed with the fashion element of putting pieces of my gallery onto jeans first having the dog and the bright colours of one of my final illustrations of the stop signs. The other was again involving the final sign post and also the corona virus character creation. both designs spread between the two legs of the jeans.

one of the designs is a lot simpler the other, if I were to sell them there would be an option for a more chaotic piece of clothing or a still quirky looking pair of jeans just less going on.

 Research

I researched some online companies that provide services for artists wanting to either have their own designs on products, fashion pieces or self-publish books. I found multiple websites that I may use if I wear to want a physical copy of my artwork or print.

The clothings and acsessory webiste were a lotbeasier to find then book publishing. I researched Redbubble, Moo and white wall which all sell products that an artist has uploaded a design for or they are there to print artwork on professional or relaible materials such as metal, wood....The pricing was quite similar but varied depedning on the quality or premium version of the products. Moo was a lot less similar in the illustration sens as it was more graphic/ logo based. The webiste offering the most was redbubble.

My Redbubble page as an example of some of my designs-https://www.redbubble.com/people/BrowneSquiggles/shop?asc=u&ref=account-nav-dropdown

www.redbubble.com. (n.d.). Awesome products designed by independent artists | Redbubble. [online] Available at: https://www.redbubble.com/explore/for-you/.

Getting a piece of art as a print or on an accessory of piece of clothing there are many websites. One I am most familiar with is Redbubble, I have tested out a few cartoon designs in the past and think it would be easy to do the same with any of the images in my gallery. They can be put on different products in their original form but if I were to add the designs such as on the jeans, I would recreate the digitally so the designs could be at a higher quality and cleaner, also in a better format for adding to clothes and such. In the past with my uploaded designs there is a price margin and I get paid a percentage of products. On the pricing page there is columns of original retail price and then my margin price and then I get to choose the mark up percentage to make sure I get paid fairly for my designs. Because there is a big variety of products pricing depends on what the product is.

 

www.moo.com. (n.d.). Custom Online Business Printing & Design | MOO UK. [online] Available at: https://www.moo.com/uk/.

Moo is a lot more graphic design orientated. They do smaller prints and logo designs for things like stationary, water bottles and business type products. I feel like using this for my children’s book design wouldn’t be the best service to use, even for any of my chosen pictures as mine are more on the illustration character side and its more logo cleaner design based.

 

www.whitewall.com. (n.d.). Best Photo Lab | 2021 TIPA Awards Winner | WhiteWall. [online] Available at: https://www.whitewall.com/uk/ [Accessed 1 Nov. 2021].

This website allows you to print your artwork onto different materials such as canvas’, acrylic, wood, metal as well as wanting to print a photobook or calendars. My brother has used this to order a cartoon I did of my family and the quality of the metal print is professional. The prices are depending on the surface for the print and size. Out of the websites for products such as these this is a bit of a higher price range, but the product is worth the price.

 

As for book publishing which would be relatable to me becasue of the childrens book route I have chosen.

 

Blurb. (n.d.). Blurb. [online] Available at: https://www.blurb.co.uk/pricing#/. Priding page

On blurb They specialise in self-publishing and books, photo books and have other things like wall art. They have a list of pricing depending on the size of the books, whether its portrait or landscape, the colour or texture or gloss of the paper and whether the jacket is a hardback or soft. For children’s book like I have created this website would only be good if it was flat pages but because mine have an interactive element, I would have to find another website that could offer that. It also only offers a landscape format for the photobooks and portrait standard reading books. However, this website is good at making pricing clear and they offer a volume discount if you were to buy multiple copies of your self-published book.

 

Looking at a similar website Softback Books from Print2Demand Limited. (n.d.). Paperback Book Printing UK | Order Online - Print2Demand. [online] Available at: https://print2demand.co.uk/print/paperback-books/ [Accessed 1 Nov. 2021].

This one I could get a direct free quote and changed the specifications and quantity of books made and It gave me a price however my book I have made is only 18 pages of content and the minimum is 32 pages, so I would have to make the story a lot bigger. This quote page is very informative, and it has options for the thickness and gloss of the paper, finishes binding something that wasn’t that easy to find on Moo.

Selfpublishingbooks.co.uk. (2011). Self Publishing, Book Publishers, Self Publish. [online] Available at: https://www.selfpublishingbooks.co.uk/.

This website is purely for self-publishing, like the other there are many formats, sizes and features of the book there to change and create. The pricing can depend on the services Id want to use such as proof reading. Compared to the other sites I do find this is the most expensive and I also would need to do a minimum of 25 pages which my book falls short on.

I think I would be best using redbubble for designs on products but for self publishing my childrens book print2demand seems like the best option with the easiest format and has a landscape option which Is what I'd want for my images to fit on the page. But I coudn't find much on the lines of pop up or interactive booksother then diy tutorials how to make your own. Even on these book publishng sites there was nothing on the FAQ pages or infomation pages. 

I decided to make my own pop up/ flap book by hand as it seemed a lot more personal and it was a lot cheaper to produce aswell as being one of a kind.