Research 4.3
Do some research into self-published comics, graphic novels, artist books or fanzines. Visit your local bookstore or find examples online. Find examples of self-publishing you find interesting or entertaining. Think about the form of this work. How has it been produced and what materials are used? Can you find examples of inventive use of paper, binding, folding or printing?
In a previous unit I looked at Fran nerd self published fanzine’s and graphic novels, but I wanted to find some others to write about. I googled self published comics and quite a few came up on Etsy, so I browsed through and found this one by World of Ccrow.
A 24 page comic about their experience and thoughts on their hometown, resisting the past and what it means to them now.
I found this comic very appealing and reminded me of a book I self published for the Book illustration unit I did last. It’s a personal account of something they have gone through, their thoughts and experiences, the drawings are very tastefully done, in pencil, they are very soft and the illustrations are drawn well and have a sense of place to them.
The comic was £7.00, which I thought was a good price for the booklet.
The seller makes the comics themselves and copies and prints them from the original, via their home printer, it’s made on a budget.
I like the hand made feel of the comic.
The second was a graphic novel by Forest Pigeon, it is a original inspired by slavic mythology.
I loved the colours used in this novel, it’s a limited colour palette of greens and black, the novel is in full colour and has a more professional feel to it than the last one.
the story is based on polish folklore, and is the prelude to a larger novel, which the artist has already got the funding for through a kickstarter.
It also has a ISBN number on the back and is stapled together, it looks professionally done, as though they had it out sourced to a printers.
The graphic novel is £10.00 which I think is a really good price for this standard work.
The inside has been broken up into panels to tel the story, there is limited words, but the illustrations are very well done and drawn. The visual pictures have a lot of texture to them, it has a natural, almost newspaper type of feel to the paper.
The third in the group that I look at is the comic by Jon Aye, an A5 full colour 11 pages digitally printed comic.
Still sick is the story of a man that goes on a bus ride into the city to meet some friends, as the night goes on things do not turn out well!
This comic is more graphic in style that the other two, it has colour blocking and again a limited colour palette. It has a retro feel to it, the illustrations are simple and blocky in nature.
Again the inside is panelled to tell the story, and has writing that helps the story along, but only intermittently.
The comic is priced at £4.00 which I think is fair for this style of comic, it has fewer pages than the last ones, and is digitally made.
Summery
I was surprised by how many self published artist there was on Etsy, and how some of them are doing this as their full time jobs, they clearly have a good following on social media.
I was drawn the most to the second graphic novel, as I liked the illustrative style the most, I enjoyed the concept of the novel too.
It has helped me to see other styles and ways you can self publish other than books, which I have already done. The comics, fanzines and novels are a good way to start out and seem more affordable in price to make and for customers to buy.
Exercise 4.3
Self publishing
Develop a small self-published book based on an idea from your sketchbooks. Produce a small photocopied fanzine or a one-off artist’s book.
Look at you sketchbook’s for ideas of work that could be developed into a self contained narrative or collected together to form a publication. For example, it could be a character you have developed, a particular style of working or a series of drawings on a similar theme.
How would you title your work and how does this tile feed back into the development of your idea?
What sort of audience would be interested in your work?
Ideas
I looked through my sketchbooks of late, and the one thing I have been working on since the last section, is botanical art. Since working on Botanical illustration, I have developed a keen interest in botanical art and illustration. Now I have always loved to draw flowers and botanicals as well as animals, it’s my comfort zone, but I would like to develop this further and learn more about it.
My sketchbook drawings and paintings are in watercolours, which is my preferred medium, but I have also experimented with digital illustration in this field off the back of the exercise.
Research
Books
I have two books which were from my childhood, I used to love these books and look at them all the time. They are part of a collection by Granada books, illustrated by Micheal Chinery, A Child’s Book Of Birds and Flowers, and A Child’s Book Of Butterflies and Flowers.
They are not quite botanical illustration, as they are not scientific books, they are more botanical art, but very well painted and delicately coloured and very fine. It is more like a reference book for the Birds and butterflies, but is surrounded by the flower and foliage too.
Botanical fanzine
I found a little self published botanical book on Etsy called ‘Flower communication zine’ by the seller Lumpy Unicorn. It was a small zine about the communication between flowers, it is a little odd, but the illustrations are colourful and its one of a kind. It’s £5 and they have done a digital printed print run of 100 zines. It’s 10.5 x 7.4 cm in size, so quite little and is printed on 100gsm paper.
I liked the size of this zine, I thought it was cute and something quite precious, the lady had written this little story, and illustrated it in drawings only, no words, it was unusual but I liked that about it.
Mind Map
I did a little mind map on different publications I could try with my flowers and botanical drawings, whether it be a fanzine, a book, a leaflet, or magazine.
Mood board
I then created a Pinterest board to get together some ideas and visual content to think about where to head with my booklet and design.
Thumbnails
I started to think about putting some thumbnails down to give me an idea of the drawings I had, and anymore I might need to add to the zine. I thought this might spark some ideas of where to go with my zine!
I didn’t get very far with the thumbnails, I think I need to decide in what direction I want to go first, or choose two to work on then decide on the final one after.
Keywords
So I went back to the mind map and highlighted a few keywords of the things that appealed to me personally and what I would like to see in a zine.
The words I chose were:-
Fanzine, Short, Plants, cottage, in my garden, information, digital.
I chose cottage garden as I would like to create a cottage garden area in my garden, and I have been looking at books and information about this. I chose digital as I want to include some digital botanical drawings in the zine as well, but I’m not sure whether they will sit well with the handpainted style too.
So I am going to start off with a short fanzine of information about cottage garden plants in watercolours and digital illustrations.
Art/ creating content
I have the watercolour illustrations from above, and I have found a digital illustration on my iPad sketchbook to use as well.
I also wrote a list of cottage garden plants that I want in my garden, and wrote down a little bit about how the zine would work.
I listed a Lilac, Dahlia, Iris, Hollyhock, Wisteria and Lavender, so these I need to draw and paint, so I got started on those.
These are the finished illustrations, I have now all the elements I need for the zine, I will plan out the thumbnails, then think about the text/ wording and typography for the front cover and inside pages.
Publication /Indesign
The publication I will choose is a fanzine or zine, just a few pages long, and I think i’ll choose a small size, as I think this would work well as a pocket book. Something you can take to the garden centre, or have out in the garden for reference.
I think the design and style would be great for gardeners, people that enjoy flowers, artists and people that collect zines. I want to keep it quite quaint and cute, with pastel colours and very ditsy and pretty, very countrified.
I put all the art work onto In Deisgn and went from there, I started with the front cover, and used some of the flowers to make a technical repeat pattern, I will then add the typography a bit later and play around with fonts etc.
I used the digital drawing of the Agapanthus on the first page, as the zine will be in alphabetical order, it doesn’t look out of place with the hand illustrated illustrations so that good.
I tried to use the Agapanthus larger and slightly off the top page, you can see the border line in pink.
Then to contrast that page, I used the poppy as clusters on the bottom page, and varied their sizes.
Page 2 and 8, this page is not yet finished with the art work, I had a bit of trouble with the sizes and pixels for this one, but I have worked out how to make them bigger without distorting them, so I will try again, but it will be similarly positioned as this but just larger.
Page 3 and 9, I used just one Dahlia on the left side, then contrasted this with the delicate meadow flowers, in a natural setting way.
Page 4 and 10, I used the Daisy’s here in a central position, as a difference to all the other pages, then I used the Lilac on the right as a trio but coming off the page and in varying sizes.
Page 5 and 11, I’m not sure about the foxglove page yet, I might wait until the writing is on this page, before I move the illustrations again. I like the Lavenders on the right, the largest bunch is coming off the page, or I might even let it carry over to the foxglove page!
Page 6 and 12, I have only just placed the Hollyhock so far, but I like the placement of half on half off, then a smaller one in the opposite corner.
I need to go back over these pages, as I have had a days break and can see some changes I want to make, but I am going to write up the wording for each page, so I can start placing that too, then I can re-arrange both elements to get it on point.
Also the back page will also be page 14 the Wisteria, I didn’t think a back page was necessary in this zine, I think a normal page would work fine.
Text and typography
After another days break, and looking back on what I have worked on so far, and re-looking at the zines in the Pinterest board, I felt my zine might be a bit too polished, not hand made enough!
So I decided to the write the words and use typography of my own hand writing, so I used procreate to write down the snippets of advice about the plants, and make the front page type.
I saved them all as PSD files so I could re-arrange them onto the booklet in In Design once they were ready. I also added some paint swatches to give a more painterly and relaxed cottage vibe to the zine.
I put all the elements together in In Design, then printed out the zine, and put the pages together to create the booklet.
Summery
What went well
I was happy with the subject and enjoyed doing some more painting and drawing, and liked researching about cottage garden flowers and plants and pulling together the advice and written work for the zine. I like the outcome of the zine, and think the small A6 size works really well, it is a cute pocket size, perfect for taking to the garden centre or using out the garden for reference.
What would you do different
The zine didn’t quite print in the order I had it set out in In Design, I’m still not sure what happened, I check all the print set up etc, but I am still unsure what went wrong. I did have to stick a few pages on other sheets as they were out of the order of the zine.
The zine was supposed to print off, so that it only needed folding!
Also two pages I cut the wrong side off, the Iris page and the Peony page, so there is a big white border on these pages.
When I have a spot of free time, I will try and solve the problems so I can print a better copy off.
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