Thursday, October 06, 2011

My Process: Lift-a-flap Books

I worked on this cute little paperback joke book for HarperCollins before I worked on Road Work Ahead. It was where I got the idea to start making dummies of the sketches. There were alot of lift-a-flaps inside to work out, and the art director had sent me this dummy that they did after I submitted the sketches to them. I thought it was really useful.

There were at least 2 flaps but 4 jokes on each spread. The biggest challenge was the layout. Leaving room for the text, but having the flaps work out too. Now I have a whole new appreciation for books with flaps (especially where there is art on the other side!)
Knock knock! Who's there? Ghouls! Ghouls who?
Ghouls and boys both love Halloween!
Overall, I love working on Halloween books, they give me a chance to do something funky and use a different color palette than usual. Grab a copy here :-)

6 comments:

John Nez said...

Yes, it's really mind boggling how those flaps can create impossible problems! I did a few and trying to get all the bits to tie in together can be a challenge.

Of course with new ebook apps it's the same... only electronic.

Unknown said...

really great work here!
I'm working on books with die cut shapes on the pages and cover...that's a bit mind stretching to do too! :0)

Lisa M Griffin said...

Wonderful! And the book dummy certainly makes it easier to really get a grip on the composition and "workings" of the book.
Thanks for sharing your process. :)

Julissa Mora said...

Very cool! And mock-ups definitely help. I do them for greeting cards, however, those flaps look a little more challenging. Do you design the art that's on the opposite side of the flap in a separate file? Then, print, cut and glue it on there? Just curious.

Jannie aka Chickengirl said...

Julissa: I had to design the shapes of the flaps and also the art of the back of the flaps. The final files were just the flaps on separate layers in a psd. The art director mocked up the dummy for me, they did manually print, cut, and glue the flaps!

Sarah Melling said...

A fascinating post - such fun to see the process involved. "Lift-the-flap" books will never be replaced by "click on the flap" books...it's just so much more fun to lift a real flap, isn't it?