To Help me Manage

Drawings I Need to do:

1. Ground Squirrel Hibernation Chart (maybe)
2. Skunks looking for food
3. Skunks hibernating
4. Nuthatch Nest
5. Nuthatch flying
6. Black Bear Den
7. Black Bear out and about
8. One more Black Bear?
9. All the illustrations for the cover (15+, little, 2" x 2" ones) (I may be using clippings of the food they eat. Only the plant matter of course. Less because the animals seem nicer that way and more because some animals' diets include other animals in the book eek. Plus plants look nicer and less emotive than if you had a cute animal).

It seems that everytime I make a list of drawings, it gets bigger and biggger. The first time I had 13. Then I did about five and counted what I had to do and still had about 13. Now I did about 5 more and still have 9. What the heck?

But on the plus side, I've actually started designing! WOOP.
On the downside, it's reminding me more of a magazine layout than a book's. How can I fix that? I know there are differences between editorial and book but I can't quite seem to distinguish if they can carry over or not. Oh well. I've only done about 1 semi-finished spread which is only the intro into the chapter so maybe all is well.

And I think the final title will be Call me in 5 Months: An Ethology of Hibernation.

And Happy Easter if you celebrate it.

More Drawings

What Illustrations I DO Have

Ohhh noo

Remember those goals I posted? Of course you do, it's just below!
Well... how do I put this lightly? I haven't really accomplished them.
I mean, I have the entire text written except a short blurb about what it can do for humans, which I am leaving till last because I am not 100% sure I want to include it. I mean, its about hibernation culture and not necessarily the science and possibilities of it.
As for the pictures, I have all the western jumping mouse's illustrations done and 1 Red-Breasted Nuthatch illustration done. That means I have about (4x3=12, give or take a few...) 13 left. Funny, because I thought I said I had 13 left to do last time hah. Somewhere there is something wrong. I should have at least 1 more illustration done by tonight.

As far as other progress, I have made some. I found a typeface I am really enjoying and think would work perfectly. It is a serif with a bit of uncleanness about it. It looks very strong and it's not destroyed or anything, but it has elements that are a bit more "natural" than a typeface like Bodoni. Anyway, I think it'll look good in my book because its more "natural" and after all I am writing about nature. I'd also like to use Helvetica as a contrast.

Other thoughts about my book on the design:
I've desided that since the writing in my book is basically a bunch of contrasting - contrasting fact and fiction, much of the design will reflect this. So I'll have the serif + sans serif, the sketchy drawings + sterile lines, very natural colours + jewel tones or something.. etc.

And names? Names you ask?
Basically I want it to contrast as well. I'd like to have the main title be a bit vague and fun and then have the subtitle very scientific. I think I have the subtitle arranged but the main one is harder:

Options:
H is for Hibernation: An Ethology of Hibernation

Homebodies: An Ethology of Hibernation

Guess Who's Coming to Denner: An Ethology of Hibernation

Hibernation is for Lovers: An Ethology of Hibernation

Call me in 4 Months: An Ethology of Hibernation

what do you think?

Ethology is a little term I found thanks to wikipedia. It means the study of animal behavior which is conveniantly just what I'm doing! la la la...

Drawings Update

Nothing other than a few drawings I've done..
They are just pictures I took of the drawings, I'll scan them in nicely for the book. I don't want to put out high quality versions of them just yet!
This is basically the style though.. I am not sure about the scratchiness, but we'll see I guess. I may try using watercolour pencils and perhaps framing the images to give it a bit more of a clean look.

I guess I can't rotate using blogger so this is what you're going to get. Not necessarily out of laziness at this point, but I don't quite want a perfect image just yet. You'll have to wait till the end to get that!