#and this one was meant to be printed on A3+

[siyuri]

Ef's moment of respite at the bottom of the Mariana Trench from amazing story Falling Falling Stars by @not-poignant

[howtobeaconartist]

Can someone pleeeeease let artists know that it's so incredibly frustrating when I buy prints and they're in weird sizes?

It hard to find frames for them.

I've got prints that are 15cm x 21cm (6"x8.2"). Juuuust oversized where I need to get a frame up with a matte.

But then I've got another poster that's 19.6cm x 28cm (7.8"x11"). Like, I can get a frame that fits, of course because it's undersized A4. But damnit it's got an ugly gap which doesn't feel right.

Please please please! I bought these things to be on display but my walls are bare because I need to spend several hours to find a solution and fit them right.

Please just stick to the international A4 A3 A2 format, or the photo size formats 6"x8", 8"x10" etc.

I want to support people, but I'm left with buyers regret when I need to problem solve purchases and don't want to "just tack it to the wall, it'll be fine".

Kiriska: This is an understandable frustration!

I've had plenty of customers ask me what sizes prints are prior to purchasing -- a totally fair thing to do if you know you want to frame it. Size has been a deal-breaker for some people.

That said, for perspective, it's often more affordable for artists to print at other sizes. For example, in the US, letter (8.5"x11") and tabloid (11"x17") are both extremely common print sizes in Artist Alley, but while frames of these sizes exist, they aren't common.

Artists still prefer these sizes though because these are sizes that are easy to print at at office supply stores or personal printers, which is what many have access to when starting out. If anything, the infuriating thing is that standard printer paper sizes are not the same as standard photo sizes.

8"x10" is close to 8.5"x11" but requires trimming, which is either extra work or extra cost.

Depending on the convention, the demographics may skew younger. If that's the case, a majority of attendees won't intend to frame their print purchases. They are being pinned or taped to dorm room walls, etc. The art is meant to be affordable -- for both the artist and the buyer. ($10 prints are pretty rare at most pop-up art fairs and farmer's market-type settings, because standard size giclee prints probably cost double that to print.)

Still, I agree -- artists should strive for more standard sizes when possible, especially if they're going to shows with an older demographic of people who are more likely to want to frame things.

That said, I've been wanting to transition my 8.5"x11" prints to 8"x10" for years and still haven't gotten around to it because all of my packaging supplies are for the former, and putting prints of the latter size in oversized packaging looks Bad, but stock levels of packaging and prints never line up that I'm not gonna be stuck with some mismatch... at some point I'm sure I'm just gonna have some prints in one size and some in the other, but that sounds like a nightmare...

[oni-odyssey]

aaaand, I had this idea that I'd have it completed by the end of the month. It's not there yet. But I took photos for notes on what to adjust after doing two rounds of test printing, and I wanted to put it out there. I want to update this blog more regularly, but I rarely finish what I start, making this blog pretty barren in terms of stuff worthy of showing off? Well. I've never tried a progress report post, so here we go. It may be cringe,and i'm sorry in advance. Look away.

so like i said i'm MAKING BUNTING!

Why? Because I thought with the release of Veilguard a month away now, I thought... a launch party... in your own home... could be fun?

What if I drew all the party members from previous games dangling as part of the bunting? And have them be arranged so that people could make it so they're kinda holding hands? Wouldn't that be a bit funny?

The plan: have print-friendly bunting! A4 sized, folded in half, maybe have it double sided so that folks can choose which way they'd like the characters facing.

I sketched up Morrigan first, and immediately realised that I will not be able to make this work lol. Morrigan being one of the few (wait, only? idk) characters in Dragon Age: Origins with a unique outfit. Because her outfit is asymmetrical I won't be able to get these silhouette cut outs to work without some real brainpower on my end to make it work. I need this to be a do-able project for myself, so I unfortunately dropped the double-sided print. Instead, I'm going for character on one side, and either a solid colour or pattern on the reverse.

I simplified the characters appearances much as I could without losing their details. I admire character designs that can have the character recognisable even with changed proportions. I've never worked on developing a chibi style, so I set another soft goal to practice that while drawing these. Look at the cranium sizes of Alistair and Zevran here. And their torso sizes. Yeesh.

I had made the decision to draw every party member in the armour they're wearing at the time of their recruitment. I think everyone will have them wear different armour or robes during the game, but at least we all consistently saw how they looked when we first encountered them.

Doing these chibis has really helped me appreciate the varied appearances of each party member. I see the limitations though, they had to be able to wear the same armour and therefor fit into the same body mould with adjusted proportions, but still, that's fun. I had mapped out on an A4 sized document that each character needs to fit into a square half the size of the canvas. This is so that it can be folded in half to be a double sided cut out. I printed, folded in half, glued then cut each of these. Size wise, I think it worked out? They're bunting-sized? Once these are all finalised I plan to print one of them on A3 just to see how lorge that looks.

Anyway, side note - I don't know why, but for this printing and assembly test I cut the string short and tied each character along individually. Why. Why did I do this I don't know.

So because I drew each character within this square, it helped me know where not to draw past if I'm folding the paper in-half. It also meant I had to get creative for drawing the larger party members. For Sten, I tried to look like he is slouching to be in-line with his comrades. As for Shale, because she's a heavy stone golem, she would be weighing the line down, maybe?

I was listening to party banter from the game, and I either overlooked or never realised how much of Oghren's interactions are about drinking. I tried something different with his silhouette. Thought about making his cut out smaller to fit with the vision I was forming about the different heights of the party members, but realised by making him smaller I'd also be shaving down an already reduced amount of detail I was going to draw on him. So while it was just a proportion test in the first print, I decided to lock it in.

Look at them. Their awkward, inconsistent shapes and amount of details.

Despite trying to simplify their shapes for easier cutting, they may not be for everyone. My take away for these characters were that I'll thicken the outlines for the characters, no need to hug the lines while cutting with scissors. A cutting blade will of course be best, but I don't have a cutting mat. And should not expect anyone else to either. After a friend gave me some good feedback, I decided I should add good ol' bunting triangles. I had been on the fence about it, for some reason. I doubted I could do anything interesting with a triangle. Maybe slap a grey warden emblem on one to look like a shield? I dunno. But I'll defiinitely try.

For the second printing test, I wanted to reflect on the art style of Origins. So much blood splatter. By this point I wondered COULD I DO THIS FOR EVERY GAME? CHARACTER BUNTING FOR DA2, INQUISITION, AND VEILGUARD? Yeah, Awakening too. I want an excuse to draw and do a character study of the Architect from Awakening, my favourite character. Absolutely fascinating character, and a really unique appearance. I've shied away from trying to even attempt him, so much detail.

Whoops so back on track, today I did a print of test 2!

I've detailed each character with what I hope is the Goldilocks sweet zone of not too much detail, not lacking details either.

It was today that I thought ohh I might document my process? So I tried to take better photos of my notes. And just overall nicer photos to show people.

When it comes to chibi it's really the proportions that are my greatest struggle. I like cute things. I can't draw cute things lol.

I'll be real, I don't like these big eyes. I don't know what style I was trying to imitate here? I did that think where you drop the whites of the eyes, just focus on eye colour - an identifying character trait of their appearance. I don't want blue eyes to disappear into the skin tone either though, so I kept an anime lid. Appropriately, an anime face?

idk i don't love what I did there. I went for smaller eyes for the rest, and I deliberately avoided looking up a reference but I know I tried recalling the artist who did the art for the cover of Bravely Default, I think he did Nier Automata art too? I can't look up his name without being shown the art, but, that artist! I have seen for the DS/3DS games he did designs for characters for that it's just the oval eyes with detailed everything else. The dots are expressive enough when they've drawn them imo, so I tried that for the rest to varied results.

Took some notes about cutting. Where to thicken lines to make it easier if you stray with scissors. Also took note of a tip for how I'm making some of the finer cuts, like in Oghren's hair.

Even smaller, a gap on one of Shale's legs.

Also, again from listening to the party banter on repeat, I forgot about her bird thing, haha.

For the first print test I did include the pigeon, so for this one I made it optional.

I only did one, I think I'll try adding two more! Other pigeon colours.

First very rough draft of the bunting triangles. Because they're an easy shape, this is definitely something that can be double-sided (left example above).

Experimented with two different shapes, slightly bowed (top right, pink backgrounds) and straight lines (bottom right, blue backgrounds). Straight triangles are just the classic shape, quick and fast to snip if that's what people would want. But it doesn't leave as much room for an illustration as I would have liked... so I tried bending the lines outward slightly. Also, tried a version with an outline and another without. I personally likee the lineless look? But it may make it harder to cut. Looking at the photo above on the left again, this was a test where I didn't include the outline but wanted to see if I could have a visual for where the edges are, and if cut outside of the border, so long as the colour is similar then it shouldn't be a problem. Hopefully, anyway.

Noticeable height differences with the characters and the triangles. Hmm.

I may still be able to get these done by the last day of September, I'll certainly try! If not, first week of Oct.

I really really want to draw these for every Dragon Age game. It's a really fun project for studying and analysis character design. I hope I can do these for more games. There's something about pintables that I think are so fun. Admittedly I have a second objective here, which is to advertise my Kofi. I just launched it and hope to use it to take commissions over the next few months. While I'll be testing out how charging through Kofi will work, I also wanted to test how free downloads will work there too.

As well as Kofi, I plan to upload these to Google Drive for download. So no Kofi account needed to access.

I don't know how to end this. Maybe just to say, I hope I have another update and hopefully download links next week!

[sabrinatvband]

Fat Evil Women devlog 1

I'm working on a new comic and I thought it would be good to share some notes on its production. I think this will be the only devlog I share publically for this comic; I'll probably include a start-to-finish log with all of the concept art and layout roughs as a tier bonus when I sell this on itch.io later. But, here's a very generous taste.

This comic is eventually going to be sold as a CBR file on itch, but I'm also doing to try printing it on A3 paper [which will be folded] and making a small batch of physical copies to give away. It will probably be 32 pages long. It's going to be an anthology [with one particularly long story]. In other words, it's going to be a complete comic, like one you might buy in a comic shop, rather than something more "informal" in shape. In the future, I plan on making enough of these to collect them in trade paperback form, perhaps as a print on demand book?

So far I've done a couple of layouts and compiled a ton of notes. Work on this project began with a simple two-page layout for a bimbo sequence.

I did all the pencilling, inking, and coloring in between two and four hours I think. The first panel on the second page uses an old drawing of the bimbo character I'd drawn several months ago.

I then made a sequence using a Goblin Queen character I'd created around a year ago. Here's the sequence and the original illustration I'd done. The second incomplete panel is from an old drawing I started but never finished.

Yes, the Goblin Queen who looks nothing like a goblin is meant to be a reference of sorts to the Goblin King from Labyrinth, if you were wondering. Except my Goblin Queen mostly hangs out with dark elves.

These sequences are only meant to be rough guides for the final drawings, but I put way more efforts into my layouts than I actually need to. After making these two page sequences, I decided to do something a little more ambitious.

I illustrated a woman wearing a shiny black dress, and she reminded me of an old indie porno producer character I'd created a while ago named Demonia [please ignore how terrible the old three part sequence looks; I didn't know how to draw fat women yet].

When I started plotting this sequence out in my notebook, it was only four pages long. But I added a bunch of extra panels in later and brought it up to six pages [The numbers are original panels, and the letters are ones I added in after making the first complete rough layout.]

I made some concept art for characters I'd mentioned in the script that didn't have designs yet, as well as a few locations. I then compiled all of that into a CBR file I can refer to while working on the final art [the blacked out bits in the thumbnails are photo references].

I then started work on another sequence that quickly grew beyond the six pages I was initially planning on doing.

A few years ago, when I first started using my Wacom, I illustrated an androgynous spider creature. Much more recently, I started moving overseas and started designing new characters in my sketchbook that I was planning on making digital pieces with later, and I revisited my spider concept. If you overlay the rough spider drawing from the sketchbook page with the digital WIP below, you'll notice I did a whole bunch of warping and stuff to the individual limbs to make it look better.

This WIP will appear in finished form in the spider comic somewhere; look out for it.

Anyways, I decided this spider would be perfect for a weight gain sequence, and so I started making concept art.

This is just a fraction of the concept art I created. I've done at least 15 pages of work for this comic, and a lot of it is exploratory work. In the beginning, I had basically no idea what the plot of the sequence would be, and designing new characters and illustrating scenarios gave shape to the story.

After making maybe three or four pages of sketches, and writing a list of elements I wanted to be in the story in my notebook, I made this rough synopsis of the plot. I then started working on a CBR file for the spider sequence that includes photo references, sketches, old designs I want to repurpose, scans of my notebook, etc.

Work was slowing down in my notebook, and so eventually I made a text document and started writing down panel-by-panel bullet points. Of course this all needs to be adapted into rough visuals, but I covered a lot of ground with this after building my foundation.

You might be wondering what the point of all this pre-production work is. The problem with comics as a medium is that it's extremely time intensive, and so you have to get all of the iterative stuff done long before you put pencil to bristol board for the first time [assuming you only use bristol board during the very last stage of your process].

[Old comic artists were sometimes drawing upwards of 40 pages a month, and they didn't have time to think things out so thoroughly. But for people who aren't drawing multiple books a month, it's been common to do multiple waves of layouts for decades, and this pre-production stuff has only gotten more common. Which is good; quality > quantity. The video on layouts below is a great overview.]

While I was doing layouts in my notebook for this spider sequence, I started working out a page that ended up not hitting all of the notes it needed to. If I'd been drawing by the seat of my pants, it would've been a big problem, but when you're doing layouts with illustrations only two or three steps above stick figure drawings, re-doing a page is not a hassle.

You might be wondering what my actual workflow is for producing finished art. Once I got very used to the feeling of using an Intuos Wacom, I told myself I was going to draw comics entirely digitally. It made a lot of sense; I could use layers, perspective work is a lot easier digitally, and I can fix mistakes and/or warp things a lot more easily.

Over time, I realized I hated doing everything digitally. There are many things that are better digital, like coloring. I prefer drawing pin-ups digitally. But I really don't like drawing an entire page digitally, and I realized my previous serious comic attempts had all petered out when it was time to start doing the final work in the computer, after the layouts and stuff had already been completed.

Of course, I'd tried making professional quality work without computers before. But it's nearly impossible to do that inside of a sketchbook [although I'd drawn many joke comics in highschool using a sketchbook], and using only bristol board I had problems with things like perspective; I have a lot of respect for older artists who couldn't use any digital tools.

So, I've resolved to buy a scanner and printer. I'm going to make final layouts in my art programs that have skeletons laid out where I want them, perspective grids, panel layouts, etc, and then I'll print them onto bristol board using light blue ink [which doesn't get picked up by a scanner]. I'll then do the final pencilling and inking on bristol board, scan those pages, and do any touch-ups and coloring in the computer.

I forgot to mention that none of these comics have words. Perhaps future issues of Fat Evil Women will have dialogue and stuff, but as a conceptual thing this first issue is basically completely silent. When I was making panel grids digitally to start working on some final layouts, I noticed that, when you don't have any speech bubbles, a traditional six panel grid looks way too square and vertical. So, I've decided to make my spider sequence on a four-tier grid, which shouldn't be a massive change. The entire story uses uniform rows, and so it just means moving stuff back. There are no dramatic page-turn moments that will be compromised by this change.

I might have to alter the Demonia sequence as well, but probably not. Since the height of the panels in the two page sequences are variable, I think I'll leave them exactly as they are.

I was planning on including a giantess sequence in this first issue as well, but if I reach 32 pages without it then I'll have to push it to a later issue. But since I'm moving to four-tier layouts, I might end up with a lot fewer pages than expected.

[blogmusicz]

Devlopment

this is my process of me making my first ever mixed media animation 

i had to face A few challenges when using indesign as i have never used indesign to this capacity before. In this process i also learnt how to use premier pro to export the videos as frames. This took a long time as for this animation i used around 8-10 different scenes. From exporting them i then put them onto indesign. I used a3 paper settings and a grid to collate them all together. 

At first it wasn’t sure about how the video was going to turn out as some of the frames came out a bit blurred due to the formatting as jpegs but i believe once they were scanned it it actually really adds to the effect of the motion and atmosphere i am trying to create in the video. I printed the frames double sided but this meant i couldnt really experiment with cut outs but the cut outs i  did do look really interesting within the video, to develop i will do this more. 

I experimented mostly with posca markers for this which helped certain features to stand out but also turned out a bit flat unfortunately when put back together in the video. I believe the parts that worked the best were the oil pastels as it created a lot of texture and also softer which divided the attention more to the musician rather than the overlays itself .

 One thing i would improve with this is the busyness of patterns i draw on each frame, i didnt realise when drawing, but when scanned it in , the drawings went too quick and perhaps looks a little too crazy and i hoped for more definition, i also really like the colour scheme , i chose colours that relates to the video colours already there. I also think the text went well! I would try different fonts and colour schemes next and improve the speed of the mixed media aspects. But really good first attempt.

[cjp-film]

RTWW Creating Props

I was really looking forward to creating the props for this film. As an artist myself I could be creative and stylish with how I wanted them to look. I appreciated the creative freedom that Luca gave me, and we were in contact during my process to ensure everything was in line with the script and characters.

I had bought some canvases and some foam board from the art shop in Tollcross to get me started with Janet’s messy art studio part of the living room which I was to design. All the rest of her items I could use my own, paints, pallette, easel etc. I began on painting the photograph of the two actors the weekend before our shoot. It took me about three hours, and I was to make it look as though Janet was still working on it, unfinished. I also kept the palette that I used for the painting as the prop, as it had the same colours therefore looked believable.

I then painted a couple of other pictures on A3 to decorate the walls, as if Buster has hung them up. I first did a storm, then a portrait of a bear. I wanted them to be strong, powerful pictures which reflects how Janet feels and how she channels this into her art. I think it portrays her fierce personality but also how she can hide away in her work.

The posters were definitely a challenge to create. One, the Good Goop and Joyful Juices poster which had moving eyes, and two, Buster’s ‘Stress in the Workplace’ poster. The design for the GGJJ poster was to come across as friendly, bubbly and welcoming, with a headshot of Mrs Muskaan and originally two other masseuses. We decided to only use the headshot of Mrs Muskaan to make the practical side of things (with the eyes) easier. During one of the rehearsals, Luca took these photos with a variety of poses and angles for me to work with on the page. As we didn’t have the costumes at this point, I had to photoshop the purple scrubs onto the portrait. Photos were also taken for the ‘Stress in the Workplace’ poster, with a series of shots of Buster looking happy and stressed out. The idea for this poster was to make it believable that Buster created it, slightly simple but getting the message across. I designed the graphics using Procreate and Canva on my iPad, then sent them off to a company called Out Of Hand Scotland to print off at our desired sizes. We chose A2 for Buster’s poster, as this was sensible for the indoor location and for a meeting, and A1 for the GGJJ, to make it stand out in our exterior location as well as big enough for the actor to stand with it and look through. I planned to use the foam board to make the GGJJ poster more tactile, as we were using it outside and has to be held by an actor. Then there was also the debate as to how was going to make the eyes move. I think the most sensible way of doing it was to cut a hole in the poster and have the actor look through. As the company I chose to print the poster was good quality, I only had one chance at cutting the hole right. After sticking the poster onto the foam board, I used a knife to shape a rectangle over the eyes of Mrs Muskaan. This was easier than cutting two circles over each eye, which also would have made it look quite scary. I kept the rectangle of poster/foamboard to the side, and fashioned a tab on the back of the poster so that it could be removed and replaced easily. This meant that in the shot, the actor who was standing behind the poster could remove it, look through, then put it back. This way we get an idea of how the poster looks, on top of the aspect of absurdity and humour.

Early designs for poster (before the photoshoot with actors):

These didn’t work because of various things, such as practicality with the eyes, or the style didn't match the massage parlour, or the colour scheme didn’t match. I had researched massage parlour posters and analysed the main elements that are commonly seen and tried to use these in creative ways.

I was also to print out some items myself. For Buster, I found some online documents about stress in the workplace to scatter on his desk to show he has been working hard yet disorganised. I also had to print out his name tag to put into his Lanyard. The font I used on this name tag which Buster will have received from work is actually the same I had used for the Good Goop and Joyful Juices poster, as if to say the GGJJ controls EVERYTHING outside of Buster and Janet’s living room. The logo I had designed for this fictional office corporation also is actually the letters GGJJ hidden in a mandala. I also found some colourful, trendy online posters to print out for the shot with the GGJJ poster, so that it’s not on its own. They were mostly random designs that I thought looked cool, but I came across a few which I think worked well with the story. One said ‘Freak Out’ and another ‘Choose Your Escape Route’. I have been practicing their composition with each other so I can make sure to put these visibly in the shot.

Then finally we were to make a questionnaire for Buster to fill out when in the Massage Parlour on the iPad. Luca designed this quickly, keeping the style the same as I had used in the poster. You can have a look here: https://thegoodgoopandjoyfuljuciesmassageparlour.myportfolio.com/work

FP

[lymphomalass]

Do you ever wonder why artists create a piece of art in a certain way...? If you do, please let me tell you a little more about my painting of "Mow Cop Castle". Artists usually paint closer elements in detail and those further away in broader strokes to create an effect called perspective. This way the painting mimics the way our eyes communicate with our brains, giving more information about the things that are in closer view and less about things that are further away. With the hill on which this folly stands, I have reversed this, in a way similar to something called hierarchical perspective, in which the artist uses unnatural proportion or scale to depict the relative importance of the elements in the artwork. In the pre-renaissance period this was used in religious art to emphasise the significance of certain religious figures. Here I have kept the relative sizes of the castle and hill realistic, but have shown the castle in finer detail to reflect how our eyes are drawn to the elements in the view we see as most significant, interpreting them as closer to us than they really are. I visited this castle last year but it took me till last month to complete this piece. I needed lots of time to think about how to go about this painting, because this one felt very special. It marked a moment that meant a lot to me. Friends mean the world to me, and this was the first time I'd met up with a certain friend from Stoke since the Covid lockdown. I used masking fluid and polychromos oil-based waterproof pencils, Daniel Smith pigment-rich watercolours and then artist's pens for some of the grasses in the foreground. The A4 (29.7cm by 21cm) unframed original is available for £75 including UK postage, or if we live close enough for us to deliver, it's £95 in an A3 size frame. Please just private message me to arrange your purchase. Or it's available in a mix of different types and sizes of prints, and printed on all sorts of lovely things at:

Thanks! Sam aka LymphomaLass xx

[studiowha]

Printing onto an A1 process (never again haha)

This has been a very bold move by me. I am creating an A3 publication portrait. Which means the physical print out is an A2 landscape size. This requires to be printed on A1 sized paper. Printing to the scale of A1 requires a special printer and the indesign settings to be changed specifically to print A1.  I started off designing on my own laptop and on the standard macs at university,  but there is no option to scale or customesize the pages to A1. This meant that I had to rescale my sizes in the level 7 classroom on the computer that was already attached to the A1 printer. This way, the indesign presets allowed me to scale to an A1 size to print. On top of this, I had to manually make my files into a booklet so that I didn’t have to “print booklet” on indesign as it was impossible. (or if I designed it on the level 7 desktop in the first place I could have). I also had to manually double side every page. 

This is the stage that really had me behind, I would do this and the margins would not be centred on both sides (its still a mystery as to why) however, myself, struan and Luka were problem solving this situation as its also something out of their scope. However, I then ended up printing one size on A1, then I trimmed to crop marks, I then turn the paper of to double side it, but this time changed the size down to A2 which would print without crop marks but it would perfectly align and print centred this way. This result was the best we could get after a number of different ways we had previously tried (took me 2 days and 14 hours to figure it out)  BUT YAY. I now know how to print an A3 portrait book if anyone needs one????

[creativeprojectlaurenceclouston]

This post shows the development of my first attempt at the sgraffito paintings. I began by working on a relatively small A4 scale on acetate. The first attempt using pink acrylic paint was disappointing as I found it difficult to make marks on the acetate. The second attempt using orange acrylic paint was more successful as I had allowed the paint to dry more this time and it was easier to make marks. I was still disappointed by how little of the coloured paint could be seen so I thought of a solution to this, which was to paint one side of the acetate in a neon colour, and the other side of the acetate in black. This allowed much more of the colour to be shown than previously. I also moved up in scale to A3 acetate. This was how I approached the making of my final large pieces.

By this stage the aim of my final piece had changed. I had decided that I was satisfied enough with the body of work to include it as part of my final piece. This meant that the final artwork would include a lot of the development prints I had made along with the final resolved large sgraffito paintings. All of the pieces of the final artwork would be displayed on the walls in my studio space.

[acdtjessicaowen]

WC- 13th March

Today was all about organising how we were going to complete the book over the next two weeks. The first step was to go and get our paper, it was all dried out exactly how we wanted it to, the last step was to flatten all of our paper in the print. We left this the whole day to ensure it was perfect to use. Shown below...

For the rest of today, we worked as a group to complete all the content which was going to go into our book. I started to complete digital drawings using procreate using past nature photography I really enjoyed this as it was something I had never tried before however due to time I did not complete this to go in the book but I would like to do more of this in the future.

Today we also had to consider how we were going to print the book, therefore, we went down to the print room and asked about potential screen printing however due to the cost of calligraphy paper and the short about of time due to uncertainty we did not feel up to doing it. Due to this, we had to look at alternate ways of printing so we went to the Curzon printing room to ask about painting in A2 and we also decided to test print some pages on some card A3 size to see what the outcome would be. Due to the paper still flattening we had to leave this till Friday to compare the size to the front cover.

Wednesday 14th March

Today I completed my poems for the book, this was the hardest part for me as I've never really been good at writing however surprisingly I enjoyed this process as I used the poem generator which allowed me to complete multiple poems.

Friday 17th March

Today consisted of continuing to put together the content of our book, today all of our papers were flattened and ready to use. So we were now able to complete a front cover for our book, I took on the task of decorating the front cover which is something I enjoyed this process did take longer than I thought it would due to me trying to stitch the flower into the page shown below. This was very difficult due to the thickness of the paper making it very hard to stitch into I had to use string and bamboo skewers however, in the end, it worked out alright however if I was to do this again I would've spent more time on it.

While I completed the front cover the rest of the group had different things to do to bring the book together. Layla and Leila were completing the stitching of the paper together for the back this was also quite time-consuming due to the thickness of the paper.

Before stitching, we had to consider the colour of the stitch this was inspired by the natural dye workshop we had a few weeks ago. In the end, we decided on the most natural one.

While doing this Muki was printing each page of the book, we decided to go A3 card as A2 would've been to big for the front cover and the printer would not print too big. Doing it A3 also means we used less paper as we just cut up the paper which was already within the studio making the pieces more sustainable.

Today we also started to use a pen plotter this worked successfully for one member if the group's poem in Urdu script this looked really nice and it was a really interesting way to incorporate technology into the book.

We wanted this to also have a meaning which linked to our performance them of comfort and home therefore we each made our moms complete the alphabet in handwriting Meg then made us each a font from it for the pen plotter however when we started to use this the pen plotter stopped writing the poems effectively as it would just overlap as it was writing this was due to motor breaking as we where using it meaning we where unable to use this machine with our piece. This meant that the following week we had to handwrite each of our poems.

[k00281015]

Another piece from my time spent so far in the print studio. I did a lot of layering of prints to create the effect. For this one I went more abstract, I decided to keep the reoccurring motif of the scarf. The piece stretches across three a3 sheets and it’s meant to look like a scarf which is wrapped around two separate heads, one on the left and one on the right. I like how it turned out but I wish the head on the right was more defined and visible.

[grad601preeyalrathod]

Test Print of Packaging dieline.

Before heading to class this session, I needed to make sure that I was happy with the scale of the packaging. One of the few things that we as a group had realised was that the packaging would have to be printed out on two A3 papers which meant that the dieline needed to be split into two separate pages.

My personal thoughts was the colour. Not too keen on the orange. Definitely different to what I expected. I might try reversing the colours.

Front side definitely doesn’t strike too much to me. Went to get feedback in the Packaging workshop. Others found the coloured packaging the most striking as well as its scale. The crochet hook from a distance might be seen differently so I’ll remove that. More bolder or emphasis towards the target market will make it stand out even more.

I spoke to Byre Aish, an hour before the session, talking about the portfolio and the packaging. She pictured it in stores like YOYOSO and type if I went with some sass copywriting or the design in a punny way as I was explaining the name ‘bundle bunny’

[raibebe]

Omg describe him i feel like i can imagine all of dream somehow but jeno and jaemin specifically i cannot 😭😭

Okay, buckle up for my thoughts about each of the Dreamies!

Renjun:

ate CDs for dinner, I have no other explanation

so fucking stable, it's no joke

did Hyuck's iconic whoop da whoop part, loved it

and his part before the dance break

his short hair actually looks good in person. Not even joking.

smol.

spoke German but I couldn't hear because everyone was freaking out 😂

smiling the whole time and waving at the crowd

Jeno:

don't talk to me

they styled his hair SO FUCKING WELL OML

you could immediately tell they were on stage because of how violently pink his jacket was

don't talk to me about the JARMS (I didn't notice him yeeting the jacket before they showed a CLOSE-UP shot of him for the chorus of glitch mode)

oh yeah, speaking of glitch mode, he did Mark's part at the beginning, so we had two Jeno centers for glimo choruses (very sexy, I approve of that)

and another thing: his "buffering" move in the glimo dance is so sharp?? does that make sense?

he's somehow more angular than in photos? does this make sense?? like his face? jawline and cheekbones especially

also he's big. like broad? his shoulders?

he just oozes confidence which is so fucking sexy

sounds fairly similar to the recording but more hyped and raspy at times

honestly, I don't remember half of what he did, I was busy freaking out and screaming off the top of my lungs

Jaemin:

he was having so much fun, you could tell

all smiley during the meant and their special little corner

he was showing his excited and weird (endearingly) side a lot

super hyped when he spoke in English (super hyped in general)

I have a photo with the translation "the definition of sensual~~" on the screen of him and that's honestly pretty accurate

wouldn't stop staring at Jeno during their MC part

his live vocals are no fucking joke, it might have just been my favorite pare

like he sounds so different from the recording in the best way possible. his voice is just much raspier? I can't really describe it but it's different from the recording and you could immediately tell that his mic was ON

very smooth dancer

he did Mark's part where he was going back and forth with Jisung during glimo

Chenle

surprisingly the calmest out of all of them

I love love love his high notes in 5 Dream version of Hello Future so so so much. You couldn't really hear the first few ones because of how loud people were screaming but then for the last, big one he was like BITCH I CAN BE EVEN LOUDER

such crystal clear vocals

also slightly different than in the recording. Possibly more powerful, not too sure, was busy screaming

he!! danced!! such a good dancer damn

someone had a "chenle for president" slogan and another one printed out the pic of him as a child with the rifle to stick it on an A3 poster. Little suns are so iconic

Jisung

he's a dancer, he dances!!

like. he popped the fuck off. literally.

he went so fucking hard. He caught my eye especially during hello future in his center part near the end. The move was just so crisp and clean and urgh

I sat next to an asteroid and she was screaming so loud for him it was adorable

for the special part where they played around, he proposed to us with the Dream friendship ring. People unalived from that.

did the 299.792 per second part in glimo from Mark and honestly killed it

also ate a CD for dinner maybe with a slightly lower pitch(?)

[liapher]

a couple bookbinding notes on two projects i did last week :)

the first one is a4-sized and perfect-bound. the contents were already typeset, but the interesting things to learn here were:

the book is typeset in the style of edward tufte's books, which works really well for this kind of non-fiction. in short, the text is in a column that takes up the left two thirds of the content area, and figures and additional notes are placed in the right third. i read several of tufte's books earlier this year, and this worked really well in print (despite it looking somewhat unusual in that the verso and recto don't mirror one another), but now i realized how useful that layout is for pdfs that are also meant to be read digitally---you can have a professional- and good-looking layout with margin notes without the text column and/or margin column appearing to jump to and fro as you scroll through the file.

i still had to compile this. did you know you can externalize tikz commands so those graphics are only recompiled whenever something's changed. this speeds up things so much. this really isn't a bookbinding note, just a note to myself in case i stay in academia.

since the book was a4-sized and i don't have access to any printers that can deal with a3 paper at the moment, i had to do a perfect binding, which turned out to be pretty fun. i followed the very helpful video by sage reynolds, except that i neither had some spare greyboard nor a book press so i had to use some bulldog clips and weights (books) instead, but that worked too. (i think the greyboard would've made it a tad easier to line everything up and keep the spine straight while gluing it though)

sawing the holes was the most fun part i think. i just used my regular book sewing thread instead of some thicker cord for filling in the holes, and that seems to have worked nicely. the perfect binding ended up sturdier than i expected, but i'll see how well it does when i actually read the book :)

the case itself was pretty straightforward, like a simpler version of this one but as a quarter binding instead of a full binding. (i forgot to keep in mind the thickness of the bookboard used at the front and back when deciding on the width of the spine, so now the spine looks a tad too thin imo.)

---

the other book is a small (12 cm × 16 cm) journal for taking short notes on bookbinding projects, like so:

the idea was to use up some old paper with a company logo letterhead, so i needed a relatively small format where the folios would still fit on the non-company-logo part. lesson learned here: don't trim paper when you're tired, it will go wrong. 🙃 oh well :))

the binding itself isn't too remarkable---french link stitches for the text block, and a quarter-bound case. i used thicker endpapers for this book (unknown gsm but substantially heavier than typical copy paper) and i think this worked really well for this book:

[utterlyinevitable]

Thanks for answering, now let's turn it around! ETHAN finds an envelope full of photos of your MC with her ex/exes... some are a little racy. How does he react?

ehehehehe

so Ethan has seen some tastefully racy photos on Becca's picta that her undergrad fwb Jon took of her. He never had a right to get mad about it but by god his heart raced so bad creeping on them late one night. Though these photos are of her and not with anyone else....

I could see my girl taking some *ehm* home videos with Jon that she would have kept on a drive hidden away somewhere because she's a sentimental bitch.

Maybe she'd also have some experimental boudoir images with him as well.. printed out in an A3 envelope and kept in a fancy storage box at the bottom of her closet under a pile of shoes. And if Ethan found it when he tried to organize their shared closet and if he just so happened to open it with mild curiosity he would be very intrigued and excited by the first few solo images thinking they're his next present. But then he'd keep flipping through and there's someone else in the images and oh god she’s not alone. Certainly not meant for Ethan’s eyes. He wants to put them away but can’t help but flip through them all, warring emotions raging within him. So he takes them with him. 

When she comes home he plops them on the table and her pretty amber eyes go WIDE and she’s just like 😳yes?😳 She tries to play it off as he asks why she still has them a decade+ later and she’s like ‘it’s art’ and Ethan just scoffs thinking there’s something behind why she’s keeping it. So they have a little tiff and then kiss and make up because it’s a really stupid argument to have. 

Odette would never do something so brazen and permanently damning. (she also hadn’t been intimate with anyone since undergrad soooo) 

[nightjarcreations]

!!! your books look amazing-- the details that's put into every aspect of it shows your love thoroughly for the text. I really like the variety of handwriting fonts used for each character and how you tied the alchemy theme into your second in art throughout the book.

The aspect I'm most intrigued by are your covers! Can I know how you're printing and I assume, coating them? I have trouble with my own experience in printing out covers.

Hi there!

Thank you so much for your overwhelmingly lovely comments ☺️ You have managed to pick up on and compliment the very thing that meant most to me in binding this fic… the fact that I adored all of the details and wanted most to be able to incorporate them within the entire design. I wanted the book to almost be a part the story.

If you had access to my instagram (@nightjarcreations), I actually did a separate post on my cover process, specifically related to my struggle with the materials and how to make them work. The covers are what I receive the most questions about, and I’m not surprised, seeing as I had such a struggle with them.

I ended up settling on this method (although I must stress that I am not fully aware of how it will stand up to use, essentially the longevity of it all - the binding itself couldn’t be more solid, but the cover wrap always shows a weakness around the spine hinge area):

I printed using an inkjet printer on A3 semi matte photo paper. I then experimented with various coating options to seal the paper. Thermal lamination was throughly ruled out, as regardless of the machine, speed or temperature, it will always delaminate at the hinge area. So I ended up using a ration of sealant layers with wax layers. It took a good few weeks of layering and drying for 24hrs between each layer.

Many people choose to send their cover designs off to a commercial printer, which negates the need to do any of this print sealing, however I have never been one for giving up and when I decide to take on a craft, I like to master the whole thing. That is not to say that others are doing things wrong, merely that I prefer to be able to do every aspect of a project, myself ☺️

I hope this is the information you were after and that it may have helped you with your future bindings!

Good luck! ✨