FINAL WEEK TO MAKE BOOK
I added things into photoshop and began editing them, making them clean and enhancing the colours.
I realised that photoshop was no longer my enemy.
Found that i know how to enhance the black of the trees without altering the other areas, can enhance colours of the pastels in the background, have a favourite magic rubber tool which fixes everything, can easily chose colours as backgrounds.
Drew thousands of leaves as an a3 page to then scan in and photoshop coloured.
Found that I hadn't joined all of the lines up so the colourful wouldn't work well on all of the leaves.I think it actually looks better not totally filled in...more like a pattern.
I also realised that I didn't really need to do an a3 page of leaves as I could reuse one section but i just know that if it was me looking at the book from an outsiders perspective I would check if they were the same leaves image and have a lot more respect for them if it wasn't... it did take me 3.5 hours to draw all of the leaves.
Then began choosing an order as a story board:
I decided to start with the bright blue because it is a like a "hello!" and leave with the brown because it is more of a "goodbye".
I chose the front cover to be that mustard tone colour because 1) it is an interesting and unusual colour 2) it is a common theme running through the pastel in the book.
I also tried to alternate very yellow pages of the trees with more colourful ones to spread things out.
Also the first and second full page spreads are my favourite images.
I am aware that all of the trees follow a similar style through out and I hope they aren't boring but more each image is very atmospheric and beautiful.
They are also a contrasting style to the front page and the other photoshop pages but I think it works because there are almost 2 styles going on and it adds diversity to the book.
Learning on the book cover project mistake of printing the book cover backwards I made special care not to put the title on the wrong side of the book. However I messed up in a different way and first time made a typo in the title which re-reading I picked up on luckily or that would have been careless and unprofessional...something I do need to watch out for though with having dyslexia in future projects.
Unfortunately because I chopped all of the images in half I saved some of them as JPEGS so actually lost the original photoshop versions which I know for future to be careful about- make sure I save 2 versions. However in the printing of my book this size it didn't affect the quality of the printing.
I managed my time so that I created all of the pages Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Then on Thursday I scanned everything in and edited everything on photoshop and did InDesign so that on Friday I could print everything off and dedicate a day to that. Then over the weekend I could Evaluate and blog the actually creation of the book. However I did not factor in getting very ill on the Friday... I really like my "to do lists" and breaking everything down into very small stages.
Before printing my book out on Friday in colour I decided to print a black and white copy out which surprisingly was very cheep-only 30p. This was very important to do because I needed to check that it was going to print double sided so I asked a technician to give me the heads up and he showed me how to do it. This was very useful because someone else in my class was about to print straight into colour and I showed her how to make sure it was double sided so she didn't waste money. This was a first because normally I am hopeless with technology and it felt good to not sit there useless and watch her mess up!
From printing out in black and white I noticed that not all of the pages lined up right... I was told this was most likely to be because the black and white printer prints double sided a bit differently than the colour and wasn't totally calibrated. Just in case, I added printer marks onto the document so that it showed me where to cut to get rid of the bleed I had added because they are full page images. I also used this mock up to add page numbers.
I was a little surprised at the size that the book printed at. It is the max size in the brief of 280mm by 200mm however I hadn't actually considered that that is practically an a4 page each side and therefore almost the same size as the originals. However after the initial surprise I think it adds to the power and strength that trees have as trees and woods are large, just like my book.
I then printed the document out in colour...very scary anticipation! However it all printed out nicely. I didn't book to use the print room because I felt that mine was a simple book and the paper wasn't extremely important and I wasn't including acetate or anything so other people would need it more than me. I was therefore happily surprised with the quality of paper in the coloured printer.
I discovered that all of the pages still weren't the exact same size and the technician told me that it was because I hadn't made the images the full size of the bleed on photoshop however I was very lucky in the fact that none of the pages were smaller than the actual page size. It just meant that they didn't all have a "bleed border".
I then decided to get a nice result for a final book I should go down to the print room and use the mechanical page folder machine to get a nice crease, then staple the book and then use the stapler.
It didn't even occur to me the print of more than one book and when I saw other people had done this I felt even more pressure to get it right. I also noticed how much smaller their book was to mine. Anyway, the "creaser" was fine and makes the first half of the book look really good but there is a bit of dis-alignment in the second half and I don't know if it is the to do with the staples because they aren't central nor evenly spread unfortunately...
I had watched a friend trim his pages first, before doing these stages but decided it would have a nicer clean cut if I trimmed the edges afterwards, using the bleed marks on the front cover. I knew that this would work because I centralised the border on indesign before printing.
I decided to use the quote "Trees have roots in the ground and reach up to the sky, linking heaven to earth" which was from my book research. I think this sums up the book well because they are both very striking and important parts of trees. I have some images that focus on the branches and how they are up so high and in the sky that they look like they are untouchable and their shapes make them seem out of this world. They connect the earth and the sky down their branches. Also the colours of the images that I used are very beautiful together (pastel) and it brings a certain magical aura to it. There are also other images that focus on the trunks of the trees and the forrest looking up almost. However this is my opinion and I have realised that this whole book is quite subjective and different people will take from it different things, but that is my interpretation that I have gained from my experience of being in the woods. However my mum for example thinks that the book is more "Trees are special. They are bigger than us physically and metaphorically".
In retrospect I think that I probably should have got more feedback of different people as to which of my sketches they liked and where to go with them. I could ask people which things I should include/exclude as at the end of the day other people are the audience rather than me. Perhaps all of my images are of a too similar style. I feel that they are similar but that makes it a coherent book however my parents for example feedback that it was perhaps too similar and focused. I did have some feedback that I should focus in on a section of my photos and just look at a small section of the branches. I tired this and included it it as my first double page spread. I don't feel that it solved my solution of adding lots of different layers but it certainly created a pattern.
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