Illustrated short story project

We'll start on our "book illustration" project next class. For this project, you'll have approximately six pages in a book (set us as three two-page spreads), in which to lay out and illustrate a short story or a poem.

WHAT'S IMMEDIATELY DUE TUESDAY:
1. Pick your story or poem (see below for more details)

For the story/poem, you have the choice of:

1. Choosing something you've written, or that a friend of your has written (as long as the friend gives you permission)
2. Choosing something written by an SNC student who has submitted the story for this purpose (see link below)
3. Choosing something in the public domain

Since we are more or less "publishing" this story through lulu.com, I want to the content (and the images) to be legit – no pilfering copyrighted material.

In terms of illustrating the story, you are free to use drawings you make, photographs you take, or any stock imagery you are able to download for free or pay for.

By Thursday's class, I want you to have a story or poem chosen, with some ideas of how you'll illustrate it. I want you to be adventurous in your layout, but legibility of the content itself will be key.

Here are links to a variety of public domain resources. If the story you'd like will take longer than six pages to tell, feel free to use an excerpt of the story.

Philip K. Dick stories (science fiction from the 50s and 60s)
Classic Short Stories
Short Stories from the Internet Archive
Literary Stories

Horror stories:
H. P. Lovecraft
Algernon Blackwood
Edgar Allen Poe

Public Domain Poetry

A broad range of public domain short stories

Just make sure you claim it in the comments to this blog post, so we don't have a bunch of people illustrating the same story. In fact, ONCE YOU'VE CHOSEN THE STORY YOU WANT TO ILLUSTRATE, WRITE THE NAME OF THE STORY IN THE COMMENTS TO THIS BLOG POST, checking that no one else has taken it first, so that we don't have any repeats in terms of story/poem selections.

Class canceled today (2/21)

Hi all. I'm canceling class today (MT Rose is closed, according to nvdot, and it's raining slush down here in Reno). Stay safe, and see you Thursday.

I'm out today (2/2)

Hi all. Unfortunately I can't make it to class today – I have to get the kiddo checked out by a pediatrician this morning. Probably nothing serious, but something I've gotta get checked out.

I was going to walk you though some ways of quantifying graphics in Illustrator, to lay the groundwork for your infographic - but I'll leave that for Tuesday. I would like you to do two things before Tuesday – if you don't have Illustrator on your laptop, you'll have to do the first thing during class time today. The second thing is something that can be done with pencil and paper.

So - here are the two things –

1. Please choose what you think is your strongest Alt-NPL logo/bumpersticker sketch, and create an illustrator version of it. Try to pick one that can be easily simplified into vector shapes. If you do want to make an image from something that is a drawing or photo, there is the option to take a bitmap image (which could be a scanned drawing, for instance) and convert it to vector art. Quick tutorial on that here:




So, by Tuesday's class, have one of your sketches mocked up into vector form.

2. Also by Tuesday – please make a pencil sketch (or if you'd like to mock it up in photoshop as a sketching method, that's fine too) of your concept for your infographic. Whichever data set you picked out for today - draw up an idea of how you are going to visually express it. And this is important – be sure to include not just the visuals, but all text you are intending to put into the inforgraphic – a title, and explanatory text giving context or footnoting items, and so on. Again, please look at the link on the previous post for examples.

Sorry, all, for missing out today - and hope you have a great weekend!