Ideas
The challenge for this year's Halloween project was to create a black and red Halloween-themed, RISO-printed one-page illustration.
Last year we had more freedom in terms of the colour palette. Although we got only two colours of the RISO printer inks, there was also the possibility of using white by leaving negative space. With this possibility in mind, I came up with a few ideas consisting of these three colours.
My first idea was inspired by cultural differences and how people celebrate Halloween around the world. For example, people in central Europe celebrate Halloween by remembering all those who are no longer with us. This time of the year tends to be a very sad time for people there, as families visit the graveyards to light a candle on graves to pay respect to those who in no longer with them.
West Europe, on the other hand, celebrates Halloween by throwing cheerful parties, trick-or-treating, throwing various parades, telling ghost stories or carving pumpkins.
Idea 1
The idea was to split the page in two to show two opposite ways to celebrate. One shows that you can celebrate by mourning, and the other shows that you can celebrate cheerfully. The reason behind this idea was to make people aware that there is more than one way people celebrate Halloween.
Idea 2
My second idea was to show two monsters having fun at a Halloween party, as it is only one day a year they can go out without being judged by society for being different. I pictured it as two monsters sitting at the bar and having a conversation about the only day no one is screaming and running away from them.
The problem with this idea was that without the speech bubble that was there to explain what was going on, this piece wouldn’t have any deeper meaning besides being just an illustration of a Halloween party.
Idea 3
My third idea was to show a Halloween tradition of playing tricks and scaring people, so I drew a piece where a person visiting a graveyard was getting caught by a zombie reaching from underground. I thought a scary illustration would suit the Halloween theme for our Halloween anthology.
Idea 4
My fourth idea was the least original but it was worth making a note of it. I was thinking a fanart of a pre-existing character dressed in a Halloween costume may be a fun idea that people would like to buy when it comes to selling a Halloween anthology.
Idea 5
Another idea was to create a scary illustration of a character being dragged underground by zombies.
Idea 6
The last idea was another scary illustration about monsters, in this case, witches brewing a human in a cauldron. I was inspired by all the scary stories about Baba Yaga I heard as a kid.
Most of my ideas were very basic and something that other people would draw or already did. However, my first idea stands out among the others as there is more to it than just Halloween illustration. There is a meaning behind it that can be interpreted in many ways. It also targets a wide range of audiences because it refers to more than one way of celebrating Halloween around the world.
Mood board
I created a mood board that helped me visualise the idea of the graveyard, the underground and important elements associated with various traditions. The top one-third of the page was a space for the graveyard, so I put together a few pictures of dark graveyards as an inspiration for the mood. The graveyard represents traditions in East Europe, so I added a candle that is said to be a light to guide the soul's home and chrysanthemum flowers that symbolize death and are used for decorating graves.
The rest two third of the page is supposed to be a space for West Europe traditions such as joyful parties and parades. I wanted to use skeletons to stand for all the people who passed away but also could be interpreted as a costume that people wear at Halloween parties and parades.
Next, I planned out the colours to make sure that any of the colours did not overlap with the background. I also changed the top of the page, and instead of a person visiting the graveyard, I drew three graves with decorations left by the families that visited them.
To design skeleton characters, I used a reference picture from a book called Figure Drawing For All It's Worth by Andrew Loomis. I traced a silhouette of a skeleton and edited the shapes to make them rounder and simplified. I wanted the character to look soft and cheerful rather than scary. I did it to express the joyful way of celebrating Halloween in the East.
I created some grave designs by using references from last year's life drawing in the graveyard. I produced three different designs, which I used to create a graveyard. The small space of one-third of the A5 page could only fit short statues and graves, as I didn't want to make the designs too small. I had to make the decorations on the graves to be clear and noticeable.
During RISO printing workshops we were showed how to prepare our work to be printed. Following the steps I copied and pasted the illustration into the spot channel. I came across an issue where the picture should turn into grayscale after transferring it into the spot channel, but it didn’t. At first, I wasn’t sure if I was doing something wrong, was it the image or the program? I followed all the steps and asked other students for help. I came to the conclusion that it would be best to save my work and try to restart the computer. After restarting the computer, I tried to repeat the process of transferring the picture on the spot channel, and it worked this time. Once all my issues seemed to be fixed, I removed the RGB channels I didn’t need anymore and exported the file to make further edits in InDesign.
Before printing the books, we were asked to create a quick Halloween drawing for the cover during one of our lectures. The first thing that came to my mind was carver pumpkin since it’s a very popular Halloween tradition. I drew an enthusiastic pumpkin cat excited for the Halloween season. I used markers and fine liners to add some depth to this illustration. I like how it turned out.
Last year's workshops taught me how to use InDesign to pervert the illustration from being cut off by leaving designated bleed space. I used this knowledge to make sure my picture wouldn't get cropped in the process of making the art book by aligning it within a safe area and leaving space around it.
Later in the printing process, it came out perfectly fine. However, the quality of the prints was very poor. The colours looked washed out and had a grainy texture which was hard to tell if it was the RISO printing or the quality of the paper that caused it. The colours seemed to be misplaced by the printer, which happened to me last year as well. RISO printing is always full of mistakes and imperfections. This is the reason why I prefer other alternatives when it comes to printing.
The quality of the art books affected the sales negatively as most people tried to avoid buying the books after looking at the quality of the illustrations. We ended up selling around three books, which I am sure didn't cover the cost of printing.
Selling the Halloween anthology taught me that people prefer good quality over quantity of products. I will consider this while making products for the upcoming Winter Fair.
Book Binding
We had a season dedicated to bookbinding as a practice for binding Halloween anthology, which in the end we didn’t have time to hand bind. We had a choice of three different patterns. I chose the most complicated heart pattern because I like a good challenge, especially when it comes to handicrafts. I never tried bookbinding before. However, I used to sew, so I hoped the process would be similar. I was very wrong when I compared bookbinding to sewing. It was a difficult process as I lacked the strength to pierce holes with an awl. No matter how hard I pushed, I couldn’t make the holes big enough for the needle, which became very hard to push through the holes later on.
The most important part was following the numbers on the pattern and trusting the process. Halfway through it was hard to tell if I made any mistakes or if everything looks good because it didn’t look like the pattern in the picture. Half the way through, I realised the pattern guided me through only half of the heart pieces, so I will have to turn at some point and work on the other half. At this point, I got a bit scared because I was using thread folded in two as I do when I sew. It was the biggest mistake because I made the holes tiny, it ended up being super hard to finish, and my hands felt like they will fell off from pushing the needle.
Bookbinding's something I would do in my free time, but not as a massive production of hand-bound books.