Let me shamelessly start the post with a "Buy it here"comment - Link below.
Amazon - Bobo and Jabba Volume 1 - 'Bobo sees Atoms'
In August 2015 Praveen Krishnan approached me about helping him with creating a kids book based on science. He had the concept thought out and was looking for someone to help illustrate the book. Having been subjected to my frequent whiteboarding doodles on Facebook he thought I could be the illustrator! The jury is out - you folks let me know if it is any good.
Here is Praveen's blog about the experience.
It all started with a 'let us just do it on the whiteboard and have the book out quickly'...when something is that easy you know there is a problem :). We set up the book, I added in all the whiteboard sketches and Praveen had it looked at by an editor.
The comment was...it needs more colour :). Well the whiteboard was out, no way would I be able to fill in colour for 30+ sketches on a whiteboard. I bought a Samsung tablet and literally went back to the drawing board. I redid the sketches on an App and sent them on. The next update from the editor was that there was not enough movement in the sketches. Kids love to see movement in their books...so back I went - redid a bunch of sketches. The final (did I say final!) product was sent to another editor to help check and arrange the pages for printing. The verdict...the size and dpi was not correct for printing!! It had to be high-res art files 300 dpi in CMYK, TIFF or JPG - the standard for printing. I, unfortunately, had done the sketches at 72dpi and .png - a web standard. Darn! The app I was using did not have the option for a higher resolution.
Fourth time is the charm! I bought a new App 'ArtFlow' and redid the entire lot at the required resolution and size. We finally got the book out in Feb 2016. Interesting process - I have a new found respect for cartoonists and sketchbook artists now. It is a lot of work!
Amazon - Bobo and Jabba Volume 1 - 'Bobo sees Atoms'
In August 2015 Praveen Krishnan approached me about helping him with creating a kids book based on science. He had the concept thought out and was looking for someone to help illustrate the book. Having been subjected to my frequent whiteboarding doodles on Facebook he thought I could be the illustrator! The jury is out - you folks let me know if it is any good.
Here is Praveen's blog about the experience.
It all started with a 'let us just do it on the whiteboard and have the book out quickly'...when something is that easy you know there is a problem :). We set up the book, I added in all the whiteboard sketches and Praveen had it looked at by an editor.
First attempt (Whiteboard)
The comment was...it needs more colour :). Well the whiteboard was out, no way would I be able to fill in colour for 30+ sketches on a whiteboard. I bought a Samsung tablet and literally went back to the drawing board. I redid the sketches on an App and sent them on. The next update from the editor was that there was not enough movement in the sketches. Kids love to see movement in their books...so back I went - redid a bunch of sketches. The final (did I say final!) product was sent to another editor to help check and arrange the pages for printing. The verdict...the size and dpi was not correct for printing!! It had to be high-res art files 300 dpi in CMYK, TIFF or JPG - the standard for printing. I, unfortunately, had done the sketches at 72dpi and .png - a web standard. Darn! The app I was using did not have the option for a higher resolution.
Fourth time is the charm! I bought a new App 'ArtFlow' and redid the entire lot at the required resolution and size. We finally got the book out in Feb 2016. Interesting process - I have a new found respect for cartoonists and sketchbook artists now. It is a lot of work!
The final product
Hope you and your young ones enjoy the book. We had fun in the process of making it.
