The Final Outcome: Art Book

This post documents the creation of the final outcome of the practical side of the project; the art book, as well as the practice book that I created before it as a trial run to test out fonts, coloured borders etc.

Practice Book

The first stage of creating the book was of course creating a background for all the pages. Looking through my art books, I knew reasonably what I was looking for; a subdued background with a neutral colour, but enough detail to retain interest and ensure the image placed on top wouldn't be too stark in contrast. Taking inspiration mainly from the 'Art of Evolve' and 'Monster Hunter Illustrations' books, I ended up with a beige/cream background that was mottled around the edges and features a faint hexagonal grid across it to add the subtle detail I was looking for. The mottled edges help imply age, as if the paper had almost been weathered, whilst the hexagonal grid suggest modern or futuristic design. The combination of both helps to be another key example in the combining of traditional with digital within the project. I am rather enjoying all the subliminal hints that I have managed to put in that just round off the project nicely. Shown below is the final page that I used in both my practice and final books. Note that there is a border that goes along the top and bottom of each page, which is not shown here.

 

With the page background set up, creating the practice book was a simple (ish) matter of taking the images I had created up till that point and arranging them in a suitable fashion on the pages. Shown below are photos I have taken of the test book, exemplifying the key features that I was using it for. As can be seen, I tried out a good few different fonts as well as layouts and sizes for the text within the book. Coloured borders were also tried to see how they might look in comparsion to the black ones that I had originally decided that I wanted to go with. As can also be seen, I got the book printed out with gloss pages; this was most certainly a good lesson learned, as it looks far too shiny and quite dreadful in general. This test book also helped me to see which images needed toning down or brightening up, so all in all, it was very much worth the time and effort to make this, otherwise the final product would be nowhere near as gooad as it has turned out to be! The test book was created in A4 ish size, using Jessop's Cewe Photobook software.

And so on to the final book; the big one, the one we've all been waiting for! This book was made to be A3 ish in size (the Jessops photobook sizes are a bit weird) as it was felt that the A4 sized one just wasn't big enough to show off the detail in the images to the best possible degree. Below are some example pages of photos I have taken of the book, showing what I feel to be the best pages. In the end, for the writing I chose two fonts: one clearly legible one for more formal pieces of text; and another more hand-writing-esque one that was still legible but adds that old book type feel to it. Again, combining traditional and modern. I decided to make the text a dark brown so that it wouldn't stand out too much, clustering the pages and drawing attention away from the images; it also helped to remain in-keeping with the neutral tones I was aiming for.

The front cover

Folklore creatures

Harry Potter dragon concepts

Harry Potter Tri-Wizard Tournament dragon concepts

Evolve Fenrir the Shepherd concepts

Realistic Pokemon Hydreigon concepts

Warhammer Skaven and Tyranid concepts

Harry Potter dragons double page concepts

The test book beside the final book for size comparison

Overall I am incredibly pleased with how the final book has turned out. I have always wanted to make an art book and this year provided me with the perfect opportunity and with me at the height of my skills, it seemed like the perfect time to do it. I will have the book on display for people to look at at the degree show in May, so hopefully it will be well recieved there. My next blog post will concern the degree show and explain what I am working on for it. Until then!