Making books 11: cover mockup

I really love linework, and was a bit at odds with what to do with this cover as i'd originally wanted a landscape book rather than portrait, but portrait is a little more affordable than landscape in the end.
[But landscape has more scope for arty looking pieces. A4 portrait is a butt ache.]

I didn't really have an original idea for what I wanted at all, but doing an original character with no basis in my comics is hard as I feel I can't give them enough of a living feeling.
when I first came up with the concept of the collected sketchbook- I'd wanted to include colour pages, which with the printer I'd chosen ended up being not possible. This situation evolved to the current point where the printer I've chosen CAN do colour, but I've decided I'd work in making a specialized colour artwork book at a later date, and as a sister book to the one I'm currently making. It also meant I could do two versions of covers- one whose theme was linework like the contents, and one which was in full colour.

So this is the linework version.

I'd gone through a few themes in my head for this, running through lists of things I'd really love to draw. I always have problems putting backgrounds. I can draw them, with a bit of a prod generally, but I hate putting them in because I don't feel I get the right amount of starkness or impact I want. I'll need to work on that and practice just drawing in backgrounds until I work out the right balance. >_<

In this case, I decided I'd draw in a reef to go crazy with sea creatures and stuff. And then I ended up choosing humbug fish for their lovely rotund black and white shapes.

... and then i hit a point when i was happy with it even though I hadn't drawn what I'd intended... Which makes my skin crawllll with failed intent. I shouldn't really as I still got what I wanted [A cover] but i think i'll end up rolling my sleeves up later this year and having a bash at the failed intended drawing.

still, I like the resulting pic. [I didn't get an isbn in the end because I hate the barcode regs and stuff you need to put on the covers. Making a book that is technically a not-book offically means I can do whatever I like on the covers :p [Including not putting the title on it. ]

There are good points to getting officially published [circulation] and there are good points to messing about making your own books. :)

OFF PANEL CARD GAME

A little while ago, Nich Angell, author of the 7string comic suggested a bunch of us comikers working together to make a card game, and here it is! [I think it's basically top trumps with a bunch of the main characters from our comics, - mine are Meths and Maria!]

Nich will have a few packs available at his table at LSCC at £12 a pack but if you are interested in any, please let me know as I can order them in for you to pick them up off my table. Please do this quickly as we are prepping pack orders immediately, and will need to know to have orders sorted for LSCC. [I can arrange availablility at other cons I'm going to as well.]  contact me at naniiebimhbd[at]hotmail.com.

Making Books: 10

A few long days this week [already!] as I had a bunch of commissions and jobs to do. I managed to get a  good chunk of my pages for the ZERO sketchbook checked up, but I also had another project to collect together a second page reference book for a comic I'd drawn for another company a year ago. As it was sitting like a large toad on my desk top since January started, I thought I'd better just get it sorted and out of the way then go back to ZERO.

Books to make:
OM 2 Ref book- this week
ZERO sketchbook- end of Feb
M5- 2013

I've run out of printer ink so can't make my second dummy at the mo -_-;; so I'll have to just format my pages instead and wait til ink arrives by post.

I have some cover ideas  for ZERO too so I can continue with that. Otherwise, it's been pretty hard to start up drawing for several weeks now -_-;;

Have decided on a printer in mind for the project now. I made my decision on Saturday and contacted and got the final sorts of specs and formats off them on Monday.

Making books :9 Dummy book

Well, putting printers aside for the moment- I'll show you my weird book making process. Remember the sheets of post-its with thumbnails a few posts back?

 I rearranged them in groups and in the order i wanted to have them read in. There are 4 sections in the book- Fanart. Original, comics and Mephistos. I then reformatted them paired up in page order with their page numbers. This lets you check out neighbouring pages and see which ones to match across two pages if necessary. It also lets you drop into place your inbetween and title pages.

[As everything is on post its, you can stick and unstick to rearrange too]
This helps for the next part- formatting:

First- I make up the page size- in this case, I opened a new file on international page sizes to A4. I then added an extra 3mm bleed on each side using canvas sizing. [If you add the extra using another background palette colour in photoshop- you can see where the bleed borders are on the first background layer- you can then use a guide to section it off. I also put guide on a 1cm safe area around the page as well.

I next added a plain white background layer for the page. I name it by the page number I'm using [say 64 like in the photo] and started finding the images i needed for that page. Having marked these out with the folder number and  which other pics are sharing the space, It's really just a matter of rearranging them.
At this stage I don't threshold or flatten everything as I'm just checking continuity, and I'll need to clean up the pictures as well.

I then continue creating the rest of the page layers in order.

Next part is to print in order. I usually do this a page at a time, running them through the printer for each page side. the end product is a lifesize book you can check though. I'm a bit rubbish at guaging pages on screen, so i much prefer seeing them in analogue, but you really don't have to do this. A lot of my comiking process though includes checking a print version to check read and flow and to see if the art is ok in real life.

Anyway, this version isn't printed on the best paper- [it's pretty thin] so it's not the way it would look in the final process, but I can now mark my edits and and write in any notes i want to include in the book.

Here's a video flickthrough of the contents of the book-

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk_3v7d3lmA