Valentines gift for my lady (lots of images)
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This Valentine's, I wanted to do somethin different and cool as a gift, so I decided to write and illustrate a book of our relationship, in the form of a children's book. It isn't digital in its final form, but I did all the illustrations in Photoshop
It was quite a process! The final result came out awesome, I'm super happy. The only thing i would do differently, would be to use cloth on the entire cover instead of cutting decorative paper. Its cool looking, but i don't know how well it'll stand time.
I documented my process!
I started out writing, obviously. Drafted up 3 or 4 revisions to get page counts, layout, and flow. After finally landing on something, I planned out the pages.
From here, I went through about 20 pages proofing and figuring out how to get my printer to register the graphics correctly, finally landed on printer settings and document positions i liked. Then the real work started!
I laid out all the pages in photoshop, based on the groupings of pages (signatures), and started drawing. Once that phase was complete, it was printing and folding time!
went through 1 and 1/4 printer cartidges
After the page was printed on both sides, on came the scoring and folding (and a glorious typeo for everyone to see.. fuckin a. I needed an editor)
Which these pieces are assembled into one chunk:
Then chunks form the book. I took special care here and read through it two or three times looking for errors in the pages, layout, registration, etc. Everything was ok!
Punching holes for easier sewing.
Sew sew sew
After sewing and gluing the binding, and all the pieces together - i squished it with important heavy books like the Dictionary, and Make-Up reference books.
Final product, closed, and open
Was a fun project, may do more in the future with different paper!
Will post some of the actual drawings later! I kept it very simple, so that printing would not be an issue. I had not used this kind of paper in my printer before, and didn't know how it'd react to the ink. It didn't bleed a lot, but got pretty saturated with ink. Keeping the designs and colors solid helped a ton!
Replies
I've been messing around with binding books as well, just never got as far as to complete one, haha.. Great work though..
I'd also like to see the rest of it (if it's not too personal like efreak said)
Really important books, like the dictionary... hahahahahahahaha, awesome
i dont know if this is intentional, or if anyone noticed, or whether you were showing us an old picture and this page is scrapped and redone, but:
Amazing job though, she must love it.
You have set the bar way too high for us guys. I'm going to make sure see never sees this thread! lol
ONO!
All girls need a hand made book given to them for their Valentines day! Hazard! Are you seeing this??
Not to be a downer, but on the page above with the dogs it says "The dogs revel themselves after 180 years to be shape shifters." Did you mean to put reveal?
she must be super happy!
But probably hard to top... Start thinkin now, you probably have a birthday probably an anniversary and maybe Christmas before next Valentines day.
He could just keep on makin' books. No need to top it, just keep it consistent... Women hate that!
I assure all of you, every single error you see in these shots are in the book, lol... I win x1000. Lucky for me, she glazed over them the same way I did
She loved it too, I got the exact reaction i was hoping for
e-freak: thanks mang! I'm going to assemble some more shots of some of the drawings. I was pretty modular with them, so i could reuse a lot of stuff. Will get some of my favorite ones uploaded
bbob: do it!! it was such a fun process, I can't wait to do another.
DarthNater: hehe yeah! this is the rest of it
Drumonman: thanks! and sure thing, soon!
Jason: thanks
Firebert: lol yeah... the irony lies in all my little mistakes, but waddayagonnado
JFletcher: hahah, keener eyes than me
Sneffer: thanks man! Pizzas are delicious. I want a pizza!
Brad: thanks!
rapture: ya, ono indeed! hahah, for another ono moment, my hair c. 2003:
adam: thanks mang, she loved it. just like i love your doggy sty---- i mean, wait.
Anuxinamoon: hey thanks
Hazardous:
Zipfin: doh!!! hahahahah. Well i guess they could revel in that as well... maybe? lol. Thanks for the kind words, I lost a good deal of sleep workin on this bad boy
willy: i like you. hahah, that's what im talkin about! It gives it character, they're not mistakes!
felipe: thanks!! it is most certainly worth it.
shiv: thanks
vig: i know right! ha... going to have to think hard. Thankfully her bday is 5 days before xmas, so i have a while! thanks
conte: thanks dude!
See men, you put the effort in you get some nice rewards!
Next year you could make a sculpt and print it!