Sharing my continuing work in progress of my new concept art book. I have had to digest hours of YouTube videos and Pinterest images of various types of page layouts to get the knowledge I needed to successfully make my own. So thankful to all of the content creators out there who showcase their ideas and make products for newbies like me to learn from. As I learn more I will certainly pay it forward by making my own.

What have I learned so far?

Graphic design is as much a form of art as the illustrations I have spent most of last year creating. The layout process has a lot of similarities to the principles of design that I have been learning. For example, balance, composition, and focal points are also elements that you have to keep in mind when laying out a page. Another epiphany I recently experienced is that the same storyboarding technique I use to lay out a comic page works great to lay out a page of text. By taking a piece of paper and sketching how I wanted my page to look first gave me a decent road map to where I wanted to go. I’m just so intrigued by how many relationships I’ve found between skill sets. It helped me to reduce the fear of learning something entirely new to realizing that I’m really just adding a layer to what I already know.

Has anyone else experienced this? I’d really like to know epiphanies you have had.

Book Creation Process

I’ve been using Microsoft Publisher to lay out the pages for my book. It’s an app that I rediscovered on my PC. While I used to have InDesign, I found that MS Publisher is a very inexpensive way to accomplish the same task. As long as I compress my images, I can keep moving along pretty well. With almost 60 pages in my book full of images, I was worried it would lag but so far, so good. Once complete, I’ll upload my finished book and build a downloadable .pdf for purchase as well.

If anyone has any feedback on the page designs, I’d love to know what you think.

Happy writing!