Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Jade Gelskey: Project 1, Alice (Updated:9-8-2010)

Jade Gelskey
Alice Story
August 24th, 2010

Here is my mood board


Note: For this I am not planning on using these fonts but I wanted to quickly grab a few that felt whimsical to me. I would very much like to achieve this vibe in the simplist way possible and I think there are better font solutions that I am researching. :)

Here are my sketches as well:



The Budget Information:

I want to do the standard portrait through blurb book. The book pricing starts at $35.95 but mine will be a little more costly due to the pages. I would like to do a dust jacket and hardcover.

What I am planning is to purchase at least 2 books (the instructor book and one for myself) so this had a role in what I picked.

With 41-80 Pages I am looking at a per book cost of US $35.95.

This will total out to: $71.90 (with shipping we will assume it to be around $80.00)

REVISION (Friday 27,2010):

In working with the text a little I am now thinking the book may be at the far end of that spectrum. I wanted to give an idea of what it would be of it were 81-120 since there is a chance once I get into it deeper that the page number will be in this range.

$29.95 Softcover (If I have to purchase myself)
for 2 =$59.90 if you throw in shipping lets assume more like $65.00 for both.


$41.95 hard cover with dust jacket (if we get the funding)
for 2=$83.90 if you throw on shipping lets assume like $90.00


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Friday 27, 2010

Here are my revised Sketches and some beginning watercolors (these will get posted tomorrow, Sat.). I am now thinking to actually do cut outs of the watercolors so you see the shape in white. Ie. Watch silhouette, bunny ears maybe, the caterpillar (on the cover).

I will try this out digitally (Scan in the watercolors) and then take them out in illustrator. If I like the look I will actually hand cut them from the watercolors trying not to damage them at all so I can use the positive shape in the book as well.

An example of the positive shape is what would be on the cover. (see sketches)

Here are my sketches:





Here are two of my pages from in-design. I was having a hard time visualizing with just my sketches so I pulled together this as a better more concrete example of what I was thinking.

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Saturday August 28th, 2010

Here is some of my water color things I worked on.
Let me know what you think?
Try and picture the cut outs (as talked about in sketches above) ...I will work on it this next week and try some different options digitally before I actually cut them.



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September 8th, 2010
Update: Illustrations, Chapter Spreads, Cover


So as far as my illustrations I am happy with the way they turned out. I tried some different papers, but really like the texture that this kind of paper has. Anyways...I know a lot of people are having others illustrate so I am really glad I took on the extra work and did it myself. Just for a bit of a challenge.

One of the things to note is that I did every other chapter with an illustration. This ended up being 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11. I would have loved to do more but with the deadlines being so short this is what time allowed.

Also note that with the chapter spreads I just left the text from the second chapter. If you look below the first one and second one are the actual headers, and text that belongs with the chapter.

I did this since I am working on putting all the text in currently and am not done... I could at least show what it looks like across from text with the appropriate title relating to the illustration.

How I picked what to illustrate: I picked some notable thing I liked about the chapter, explored that, and came up with a simplified, yet meaningful representation.


As far as the cover is concerned. This is more of a preliminary idea. I am not totally sold on it yet and am still working at finalizing how I want to do the cover. Any suggestions are much appreciated.









Anyways hope you like. It was definitely fun getting to explore illustrating something for a book.

13 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. I created the little flourish (that houses the page number) on the in design pages. Let me know what you think...

    Love em, Hate em?

    Thanks

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  3. I really liked how the illustrations turned out, I like how you added the black on top of the color. As for the flourish around the page numbers I enjoy looking at it.

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  4. Wow, this is really great! I like how the illustrations turned out, you did a lot of texture and depth. I think the black is a bit TOO objective in some places, they look like actual things, like the caterpillar, but maybe that's what you want or do you want it to be purely non-objective? There's a blue spot on the cover that's really strong and dark that draws a lot of attention where the rest of the colors are lighter, it might be something to look at changing on photoshop.

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  5. Your choice of fonts fit perfectly with your watercolors, I think this will turn out great.

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  6. i wasn't quite sure on how this was going to turn out in the beginning, but i really LOVE it now, i love the black with the colors i feel like it creates very distinct personalities. the shapes that you have created feels very cohesive and it ties in very well with the colors. one thing i would suggest would to figure out a way to tell the reader what exactly the photo is maybe it would be cheesy, im not sure.. just a thought.

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  7. Wow!! I REALLY love this idea!!!..alot!:) I wasn't really sure what you meant when you were going to do abstractish images but I love the dark black lines over your beautiful water colors. And the interpretation of the mood rocks!
    I like the typography with the simple heading for each chapter spread it would be really cool to incorporate a little color on a few random pages throughout the chapter as well, maybe with the page numbers or something?...but it really is awesome!!

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  8. I agree with Christian. With an abstract-like concept, some of these ch. spreads are showing some very noticeable objects. I don't know if that fits with your concept or if you've decided to go in a different direction.
    I think that there is a definite contrast that you've created with the colorful abstract backgrounds & the bold illustrations atop them. Will there be any other color throughout the chapters?

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  9. I really like the bright vibrant colors with the dark graphics on top. I like that the cover and the layout is simple but very interesting. Good Job

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  10. I really love the extremely vivid colors and the contrast with the silhouetted shapes that seem to be in the foreground. I think the only thing that you may need to be careful of, is the level of abstraction of the images. Some are really clear what the represent when others are really hard to discern. You may want to keep them all understandable or all completely indiscernible.

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  11. The water colors are really pretty. This is not what I imagined, but i like where its going. I'm not sure I like your fonts with your layout. The illustrations are so expressive (which I like) so I'm not sure the serif style font with the rigid layout is adding to your imagery. Overall, its fresh and eye catching, the colors are great.

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  12. The colors and textures are beautiful, but the black lines seem a little heavy for what you were going for(according to your mood board).

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  13. I agree with Christian and Christina... The shapes are definitely objective. If thats what you wanted, then no worries. I would maybe experiment more with the way you apply the black shapes over the watercolors. In some cases the positive-negative relationships feel really well thought out (ex. chapter 1), in others they feel kindof awkward (ex. chapter 7). You could maybe create more consistent patterns, find different ways to crop off the black shapes, scale them smaller or larger, etc.

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