CATS!

Originally I intended to make a book of cat and dog drawings - purely illustration and quite an expensive, high quality coffee table book. In one of the crits (before I had started making my books) Lorenzo mentioned that although the book was illustration based and quite whimsical, it did need a better direction. I decided to just draw cats but then had to find a subject for the cats to be based around. on the list of possibilities were;

Ninja cats, cats who look like their owners, bad cats, cats of the world, superhero cats, cats dressed as famous people, cats in clothes, cat stories, cat instruction manuals...

Eventually I plunged for cats dressed as famous people.

I wanted to do some context work for it all first before I got stuk in with the making but in the end I couldn't find anything that was relevant so just got on with the drawings. (I found a good load of context stuff eventually though!)

Here are my famous felines in all their coloured glory... (front and back covers)

Once I had drew all the cats (watercolour pencils) I scanned and laid out the book to be A5 format. I had decided to have the book as a collection of postcards more than a traditionally bound book, thus saving time and money. I had a bit of a disaster when it came to printing them, originally I wanted them on off white card, colour printed. I hadn't realised the mac suites don't allow any old paper anymore and the digital dungeon was fully booked so I thought I wouldn't be able to do them at all. Luckily Amber let me photocopy all of my books which although it wasn't ideal because they had to be in black and white, at least I could have them on the stock I wanted. In the end they looked quite sweet and more DIY handmade zine type books instead of the polished, expensive looking illustration book I had envisaged. Oh well.

I was a bit upset about how they turned out, in my tutorial Lorenzo said they didn't look like the work of a thrid year graphics student which put me down a bit but I understand where he's coming from - I hadn't designed them to turn out like that but instead did what I could with the resources available.

Annnnnyway, I thought if people are going to buy this then it needs to be a bit more special - again I did what I could do with the available resources and decided to make some stickers, some large colour cat stickers to give away with the books (3 free stickers per book!) and a set of smaller stickers with my name on to seal the brown paper bags I had brought.

 

I brought some big white elastic bands to bind the books with, I think they look nice for what they are. Anyway, I still have all the illustrations and one day when I have more time and money I might actually get around to making the books I wanted to in the first place!