The Pumpkin Dream - New Borders and Dingbats

After spending some time with "The Pumpkin Dream" (Industry Version) that I had devised for CreateSpace (via Amazon), I started to feel it was missing something. While the book felt fine in its original 7"x7" format for Blurb, the new 7"x10" page felt a little too open to me... and it wasn't long before I was pulling out InkScape (during this past week) and testing some spooky border flourishes for the pages. One such result (below) is this new internal page border, of which a slightly updated version, will soon makes its appearance in the final CreateSpace/Amazon version:

I thought this was great fun to create! And from this border started to go a little crazy putting dingbats in a variety of place - now on the credits, dedication, and biography pages...

From there it was time to attack the cover which was actually the first thing that started to bother me, after I had initially termed the book complete. I felt the cover was not only too plain, but the cover illustration (which at full size has alot of detail) instead looked like a swirl of mush in a reduced size in both real life and as a thumbnail on a web screen. Taking a cue from the border work and dingbats of previous pages, the result came out in this manner:

I have just uploaded these changes to CreateSpace and am awaiting the 48 hour file preview whereby the system makes sure they are printable files. I believe they have just rolled out a new system that lets you publish a book thru now, without having to wait for the proof to arrive at your door, (although I have to say they were always VERY speedy about getting proofs sent). When the files are approved, I plan to go ahead and have that process for sale on the Amazon website. (I'm not sure how long it will take images to update on the Amazon website, so I will submit some images to the book's gallery to make sure the new version is visible with all these new borders and dingbats.

Film Reel Organism

Over the last couple of weeks I've started to work on a promised music-video project for a song by the band girabbe for their upcoming release slated for this summer. I believe there is a full video-album planned with different video artists participating on certain songs, and I'm looking forward to experiencing the full release!

Somehow, perhaps aptly, I was able to grab a really hauntingly atmospheric number titled "ghost radio (part 1)" and have been doing some test runs on style and content. (There is a very interesting story behind the song, but I will leave that tale up to girabbe).

In the meantime, here are a couple of experimental snippets from my work thus far, utilizing an old freeware software friend InkScape, to create animated bits brought into Final Cut. (Note - the sound on these tests is also random personal experiments - see Moon City Costumes).

(please place your amoebas between the speakers)



(a skeletal broadcast from the dark ride)

I've got a long way to go, but I've been enjoying this break, that has given me the opportunity to get back into my more surrealist abstract leanings.

Also, as a side note, I would like to recommend the following fun internet search for images  from the book Codex Serphinianus (a strange, wonderful book that is inspiring for its unintelligible other worldliness) -- (think Fantastic Planet in book form). Someone has also posted a youtube video of some page turning through the book:

A Brief History of the Pumpkin Dream: (Part 6) - Swing You Sinners!

Continued from:
A Brief History of The Pumpkin Dream: (Part 5) - Monsters from the Id

Okay, so finally, I found my way to the end solution for illustrating this book project - Inkscape (a vector-art freeware program). Contrary to the shading and modeling of images occurring in the previous blog (with Corel Painter 11), the actual goal was to create simply-designed characters that could be easily manipulated for every eight lines of the poem, whenever a new image was needed.

Coming from years of working will Adobe Illustrator (and still a bit sad about Illustrator not being compatible on the new system) the learning curve was frustrating. I slowed down quite a bit to read the software instructions, and decided to at first just try to work with simple shapes - combining them, splitting them, playing with the line points, etc - which wasn't too far from my final goal. And here are a couple of the early character drafts with Inkscape :

Our main character here in mouse outfit.

Trick-or-Treat Witch
(Olive Green absolutely only accepts coven-approved sweets).

Duo of Trickster-Treaters

Also, at this time, I was re-ingesting lots of 1930s animation for inspiration (see end images part 4). In particular, I have always been fascinated with 1930's Fleischer Studios (Koko the Clown, Bimbo, Betty Boop). I would set the screen on freeze, and pencil sketch the images.

The next test was to see how well I could recreate characters from source sketches. I had sketched the tree below from a great little piece called "Swing you Sinners" (see YouTube video below) that involves a character who finds a soul full of trouble when he gets caught in a graveyard. The character below is one of the singing trees in the graveyard, and it turned out that InkScape was nice for pen-tracing sketched characters with the Wacom.

(Also, click here to view my old-school Halloween animation playlist)

So between the tree (with a few borrowed and scattered limbs), and maybe the walking house near the end, etc., together with tons of old school Halloween inspiration... the image below was my first of a few versions that finally culminated in the final style for the imagery:

(The North Wind (Peter Max ala Saw) was nixed here for a more Halloween-ish sky).

Whew, well this generally decided, this then started two months of intense illustrating! For every eight lines of poetry,  my goal was to create a drawing - 37 illustrations in all...., so, as far as the blog is concerned, I think from here I'll take a break on this whole "history" of the book set-up and maybe just dabble in a bit of postings about sketch to digital translations... perhaps...