November 13th 2010: Audience Of One

I haven't done any type in ages so I thought I would. Lyrics from Audience Of One by Rise Against. Nice.

November 12th 2010: Alice Is A Ginger

Never seen a ginger Alice before. Thought I'd make a change. Dodgy quick drawing accompanied by some uncareful brush pen colour and stripey socks. Always stripey.

Graphic Systems: A walk in the woods Completed

Another book cover busted out in a day, even though I had a crit all day at uni. Speed. It's getting easier now that I've figured out my system for setting up the files & getting things in the right place. I really like the colour scheme on this one, I think the green and the brown are working really well together and the yellow of the bears face really stands out as it's the only other colour. This ones got a leaf as the extra little illustration above 'Bryson' which is obviously derived from 'the woods.' In addition to this I've also added a couple of little twigs onto the back cover box as it was brown which made me think "tree." Overall I think this is another successful cover. It's slightly different to the others; as it had such a vertical illustration I had to move the bear to one side and have the text on the other but I don't think that this has effected the layout negatively at all. It just adds a little more variety to the set. The crit went well today, my designs recieved a good reception and the only problem that came up were the use of the grid to get sections like the 'Black Swan' logo & the barcode in the same place every time. So I edited my grid system and simply dropped the barcode and repeating text at the bottom of the back cover onto the master page. Problems solved.

Graphic Systems: A walk in the woods illustrated

So I'd had a super productive day anyway getting a whole cover done and thought I'd crack on and try and do as much of another one as I could. I read the first chapter and a half and discovered that about 80% of it is about bear attacks. So obviously I chose to illustrate a bear... it turns out I can't draw bears. I spent an hour and a half sketching really awful bear faces and then rubbing them out. So this one took forever to do even though it's so, so simple. But I'm quite pleased with the end result, it's consistent with the others but works on it's own as an illustration as well.

November 11th 2010: The Pointer

The man who points stands in one spot.

He points at trees, at birds and rocks.

He points at stars, when the night rolls in.

And then at the sun as the day begins.

'It's rude to point,' people all say.

'But I just love to point all day!'

'I hope that I will never stop.'

But then one day his arm fell off.

It's a cautionary tale kids. Take warning.

Graphic Systems: Notes from a small island Completed

After faffing around with the style of illustration for so long and taking forever over the first cover it was time to pull my finger out. So I bashed this one out in a little under... lets say 8 hours. A days work (although I won't be stopping yet). I've added in the blurb here, my own abridged version in fact since the one on the back of the book was near enough a full page. I've also got the swan up in there and I even did all the nerdy stuff like making sure the sections of the spine line up with the ones on the other cover. Next!

Graphic Systems: Notes from a small island

Second book cover. Same illustration style as before with the cut out paper. I'm really pleased with how the boxer shorts turned out and I've picked the colour palette to reflect the UK. However after talking to Neil I think I may need to rethink the colours slightly so as to keep it more consistent with the brightness of the first cover. Other than that I think the layouts are working well. Obviously this still needs a couple of pieces adding such as the Black Swan logo, the blurb and the quotes on the back.

I tried making the backing brighter so that it matches the first cover a bit more but I think it just looks a bit washed out and makes the illustrations look a little lost whereas the textured quality of the first one helps to hold it all together so I think I'm going to stick with that one.