Monday, July 07, 2008

IA: Update

I promised previously regular updates on my progress with the Inappropriate Alphabet, my book project due to be published sometime (hopefully) this year. And yet months on, this is the first such update... so if you've been hammering F5 or apple+R since then in the hope of developments, I'm sorry. There'll be more from now on.

The main struggle with turning what I had into an actual book has been the extra stuff, outside of the alphabet itself. I've drawn out end papers, dot-to-dots, quizzes and classifieds sections tried writing cast & character bios, contents pages, forewords and prefaces. And so far have had little success.

Otherwise though, it's largely been a case of colouring in all the originals. You may have seen already on my website the latest cover (with the sticker currently there awaiting a decent joke):


The title's Love Letters now, I guess that's pretty obvious. Here's the title-page spread:



And then there's plenty of redrawing to do too. A lot of it is now done, but I've still got plenty to go. Sometimes it's just a case of adapting the original, as in with O is for Orgy, to fit the new spread-per-letter layout. Here's the O spread half way through colouring:


And then sometimes they're just not suitable, as in with J is for Jailbait. I tried replacing it with J is for Jennings Mask, but apparently that's even worse. I'm inclined to agree. I coloured this in and it actually made me feel a bit sick...

On Brixton



A digital sketch inspired by/completely ripping off this Russian guy. Photography and illustration combined, a bit like in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, is almost always cool.