Colouring book
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Colouring books have always been a cheap way to keep the kids quiet for a few hours whilst letting their creativity flourish. I myself found that I became intrested in art when I coloured in a picture of an octopus and diver and found it to look really impressive. Creating a colouring book around my theme I knew Id be creating lineart of my characters and putting them into a book. But first I wanted to focus on creating a cover. Crayolas cover is aesthetically pleasing and shows a preview of the book inside.
With Crayola's it is simple and effective, the outcome is professional and very cute.
This example on the right (source) features a cover that isnt so good looking and looks very messy and unprofessional. It mixes too many fonts, some very hard to read e.g. Life Escapes. The title is in a comic sans style and doesnt give a professional look that would appeal to an adult let alone a child. furthermore, the images on the front give no preview of the art inside and thus isnt very inviting to a consumer
This is another page from Kimberly's page which shows much improvement. The page has few images on it as well as being clearer to read with 2 types of block font. 'Life Escapes' is still a hard to read font but the lay out has become more aesthetically pleasing to the eye. The image shown is also one found in the book. this gives the consumer an idea of what is inside the book.
for my cover and back cover I wanted to add the elements of an example of the inside drawings as well as the motif of coloured pencils; I feel like it would add a splash of colour while communicating to those who can't read.
Images not owned by me
For my cover I used a pencil asset from a clip art site (source)
and used my character Nio-Mii for the cover as mermaids are a big 2017 trend and thus would get the attention of more consumers. I also made sure to use a page from inside the book as an example of what the work could look like. I drew a pencil and placed it as an angle to direct the eye to the face of the drawing (my personal favourite part) I used fonts from dafont.com (unicorn giggles)
and kept them consistent throughout.
This is a back cover I made which didn't come out very well; it looks very messy and unprofessional . I wanted to add pictures of the contents of the book but this ended up looking really messy and unreadable. the pencils from. (source) come across really a,ature and childish as well as the mash of fonts from dafont.com. The brand placement is messy and unprofessional as its too blatant.
For my final back cover I used 2 fonts; the unicorn giggles font and an art deco font from font space. This design is less cluttered and uses the same clip art from the front cover; it contains a small blurb to entice the customer to buy as well as the branding of my own Moth Eaten shenanigans brand. If I were to become a big company this placement wouldn't be as blatant but as a small independent business, it's best to advertise where and when I can.
My sketches were created traditionally in A5 and then inked. The poses were referenced and I tried to make the poses reflect the personality of the characters within; I also included more interactive pages like a create a character page and add make up page to allow for more freedom of expression from the children using it.
Overall I am extremely happy with the outcome of my colouring book. In future id like to add more pages and use higher quality paper for prints; though I could have put a note pertaining to the fact a divider would need to be used between pages if markers are used to prevent bleeding through the paper. Glue binding would also work better than staples in a professional setting which is something I can experiment with at a later date.
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I also tested my colouring book on my niece and nephews and a piece of criticism I got back was that I should add more male characters into my book. Which is a valid criticism to be able to relate to more than one gender. Overall they said they really liked the size of the prints and think the designs are really interesting and cool; and fun to colour in.
Paper doll
In the documentary "the toys that made us" it was stated that before 3d plastic and rubber fashion dolls were popular paper dolls were really the only kind of girl toy that was available. though toys aren't gendered in today's society in the 1930s boys had a plethora of playthings when girls only had paper dolls. I wanted to make my own take on paper dolls and create my own.
I wanted to use the character Alula ( Alula is the name of one of the first twin stars discovered and thus fits in with the celestial theme) as I had already created many outfits for her due to struggling with her design. I struggled because I didnt want to create a classic boring ringleader like a costume you could buy but I also wanted to keep classic circus elements. I used my struggle to my advantage and I had many designs to make into a doll. Many of her outfits have been inspired by other characters such as the yellow and green overalls inspired by Lola pop from Nintendos arms. The purple and blue inspired by the other character of Chell and the skater skirts and clown heart top are inspired by popular fashion. I really like the outcome of the final product however in the future Id like to more thoroughly design more outfits and have more reason to why I designed them how I did. Alot of the designs were heavily inspired by others such as the Lola Pop outfit or were just made off the top of my head. The whole process took two days including the sketch, inking, colouring, cutting and creating the tabs, testing and scanning and in the future id like to take more time and expand on my idea. Below is an inspiration picture for my layout as well as my own final design.
stock-images-coloring-book-mushroom-image29357734
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https://www.yellowbirdproject.com/products/indie-rock-coloring-book?variant=5792083673116
https://myfanwytristram.com/2016/05/21/return-to-the-low-tech-zine/amp/
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http://jk-assist.com/coloring-book-kids/kids-colouring-book-elegant-coloring-book-kids/
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http://paperthinpersonas.com/2011/09/26/marisole-monday-mint-and-roses/