Anyway, those anomalies required some addition graphic design to amelliate. Ok fine. You see, the difficulty is that, although I matched my monitor to this new digital Canon press, visually, it is still a guess as to how the printer will respond to those changes.
Now, I want to say here, that although I have been advancing nicely with this new printer, I still intend to work with the other printers who have put time and energy into this project. As it turns out, there are at least four different methods of printing and binding. And, there are the two versions of the books. It now seems apparent to me that the look of the Gnome-sized and Big People books will be different. The reason here is that the backdrop on the Big People Books has changed in this process to adjust the books for the new Canon presses.
I am uncertain about the Gnome-sized books at this point. My concern is getting the Big People books locked in and begin to build inventory. This, of course, will put the remaining books in a position to do the same. It is Providential that all this back and forth adjusting has taken place, because when I thought it was finished (for the twentieth time) we began doing the artwork again. So my juggling the layout around and search for a new digital printer had allowed the illustration process to advance toward completion.
In terms of the illustrations, the sketches for all but book five al nearing completion. They are only sketches at this point, but hey, that's part of the process. It's a bit of a bummer that we had to skip over Book Five, in terms of the artwork, but much of Book Five is The Gnomic Tales, which take place in times past from our present story "Zach and Zebby's Grand Adventure". So that means that the perspective of the art must be aesthetically different and we need to address that after we finish we the present time frame. So the bummer is that The Gnomic Tales are in the middle of the Book Series. Eventually The Gnomic Tales will get their own Storybook treatment, but for now they exist as an assortment of synopsis' within Scene Ten, which comprise Book Five.
I am attempting to time the release of the books, so that buy the time we get to Book Five, that artwork will be completely finished. That is a big task and part of that is building inventory of the Hand-stitched books.
For the time being, all the book will be Hand-stitched. I'm not keen on Perfect-bind for this project. I do have the files set up for Perfect-bind I want the Hand-stitching because it feels far superior and has the sense that the books have been stiched by the Gnomes. But, it is more costly to produce and takes longer. Although, I am working out a production line that may very well compete with machine bound books and will very likely combine the two processes.
That's enough for now. AG
