Eeeeee, my copies of The Brotherhood of the Stinky Underpants arrived in the post this week! I’m very pleased with the colours and how they turned out so close to the original illustrations. The book is available online and some of the illustrations from inside can be seen here.
I’ve finally had a chance to listen to this chat on Just One More Book about self-publishing… and it’s just fantastic. (hee hee, I held my breath while listening to it as they mentioned Spotty & Eddie as an example of a self-published book) Andrea and Mark offer some valuable insights into self-published children’s books and discuss some of the traps authors and illustrators can fall into. I especially appreciated hearing their perspective on the importance of editing! It’s one of the hardest things to do to invite someone to give their honest opinion, and an even harder thing to accept their input when it isn’t something you want to hear. I recommend this podcast to any author or illustrator thinking of going the self-publishing route with their children’s book.
Christmas image available Royalty Free at ImageZoo
Just wanted to wish you a very Merry Christmas and a safe & happy New Year! Am missing the snow here in sunny Australia… but we’ll just have to make some sand-angels on the beach instead, as we’re having a bbq on Christmas day with family and friends! I’ll be taking a bit of a blog break over the holidays… but in the mean time here’s a sneak peak (left) at a sketch from the children’s book I’m currently working on, Riley’s Lost Tooth by Diane Cantrell.
Debbie Ohi wrote a kind post about a few of my greeting card tips… her young site is dedicated to everything to do with greeting cards, and already has some great tips, worth keeping an eye on!
It’s that time of year again to start thinking about promotional items! I’m always on the look out for new ideas for promotional items that a) show a sampling of my illustration styles, b) aren’t too expensive, and c) are green, (i.e. reusable by the recipient, have little waste in the printing process, and made with recycled content.)
My favourite reusable promotion idea is a calendar… it’s an excellent way to feature your artwork because it isn’t just filed away in a folder with other artist samples, and it’s seen and used every day for a year by the recipient and their coworkers. (Your art out in plain view = good. Your art in a filing cabinet = bad.)
So this year I put together a 2009 Calendar of my recent children’s book illustrations, featuring illustrations from The Little Boy’s Smile, Tartan Meets the Queen, Good-Bye, Baby Max, Spotty & Eddie Learn to Compromise, Bookie and the Scoliosis Diagnosis, and The Brotherhood of the Stinky Underpants.
iPhoto Calendars & Print-On Demand : Putting the calendar together couldn’t have been easier, as instead of creating it from scratch and handling the printing myself, I used iPhoto and was done assembling my calendar in about an hour. And conveniently, you can order your calendar through iPhotos print-on-demand service (i.e. only print & pay for the quantity you need.)
The lovely thing about print-on-demand is you only print what you need… whereas if you go with offset printing, you have to print a high-quantity which can bring down the cost per-calendar, but also means you may end up with a lot of unused & wasted promotional materials (not very green). Another benefit of print-on-demand for low quantity printing is you can create multiple promotional calendars tailored to specific target audiences at no extra cost to you.
Green Printing Specs : I contacted Apple Photo Services directly to find out how environmentally conscious their products are, and was informated that their printed products use environmentally friendly materials. They use McCoy paper stock (by Sappi) which contains 10% post-consumer recycled content, is certified by both the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), and the electricity to produce the paper was generated with 100% renewable energy. They also use nontoxic and recyclable dry inks for printing. You can find more product specs on iPhoto printed products here.
So there you have it, an easy reusable promotional item that’s quick to put together, not too expensive and green! If you’re interested in a copy of my new, (colourful, heavy stock, coil bound 10.5 x 13 inch, 12 month) 2009 Calendar, you can order a signed copy through my Etsy shop.
Eeeee, I’m having a very fun month for exciting packages arriving in the mail… Nina Saab just sent me copies of our book, Bookie & The Scoliosis Diagnosis, yippee!
Everbest printing did a great job on the printing, it has a nice feel to it and the colours turned out very close to the original artwork. You can purchase the book here (CDN$21.95), and proceeds from the sale will be donated to the Children’s Hospitals Orthopedic Divisions. Nina also has launched a Scoliosis Diagnosis website with information on scoliosis you can check out here.
Sigh, this is a job I’d LOVE to go for… my alma mater, Capilano College, is hiring an illustration instructor. But I have a “little” issue of location, being that I’m on, you know… the other side of the world! So thought I’d pass this along to any illustrators in the Vancouver area who are keen to get into teaching at a great college :
WANTED: Illustration Instructors
Capilano University is looking for advanced level illustration instructors for two courses. If you’re a current working professional illustrator looking to share your experience, please apply!
http://capcollege.bc.ca/services/career/human-resources/employment-opportunities/faculty.html
At first I was horrified to read this post on Drawn! about the Orphan Works Act and the adverse affects it could have on protecting illustration copyrights. But then I started reading some of the responses to said post, and came across Dan Heller’s writeup which served me up some humble pie, as I realized I had taken on this doom & gloom perspective on the act without actually reading it myself! So I recommend to other illustrators out there who have heard of this act and have had a similar lump-in-your-throat reaction to it that I did… have a read of the actual act, or Dan’s dissection of it, then make up your mind! As for me, I don’t feel so worried about it… I’ll just keep making sure my work has my name on it, and do what I can to not make it easy for people to steal my images online or otherwise.
Well after a little navel gazing, I’ve updated my Top 10 Illustrations list…
Tom Krause |”The Little Boy’s Smile” children’s book illustrations
It seems that everywhere you turn, products and businesses are going (or claiming to go) “green.” Among the ambiguous buzz words is “zero waste,” which implies that your product or service creates no waste from its infancy to death… it is created from renewable materials and is able to be reused or recycled, avoiding landfill.
But how realistic is it for an office (or art studio!) to create zero waste? The GreenBiz article, The Zero Waste Office : Is it possible?, addresses that question, and gives some great achievable goals that we designers & illustrators can adopt into running our own green creative studios :
“At this time zero waste is more of a journey than something that can be achieved,” said Larry Chalfan of the Zero Waste Alliance, a non-profit consortium of educational, government, business and other groups. “Too much of the things we need simply aren’t ready for us to truly be zero waste. That said, a lot can be done, and many organizations make the goal ‘zero waste to landfill’ and then further define it to mean over 90 percent of waste being diverted into reuse or recycling.”
For more info on how to be a greener designer, check out these other tips & posts on my blog!