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Caricature for Leipzig Book Fair
Recently I got a really cool job of designing and drawing promotional material for the stand of Bosnia and Herzegovina on Leipzig Book Fair 2011.
I was asked to draw Ivo Andric, or Nobel prize winner for literature, together with contemporary authors from Bosnia in a kind of good-looking/cute caricature.
They would then print that drawing on posters, leaflets, bags etc...
I got to it right away, sketching the characters for the caricature.
And just as I got everything perfectly aligned and in balance...
... another author joined the group.
What I did then was not the good old "erase and draw it again" method that I usually use but the "fix it on computer" method I really try to avoid. First stop - I inked the drawing as it is.
Then I scanned it in 1200 dpi and traced the whole thing in vectors (which is a good thing as the image was meant for 2x5m poster). By doing that I could then re-adjust the elements without any loss of the quality of drawing. Not only that, I could easily color it... well, I do work as a graphic designer so drawing vectors is something I know how to do... And in no time (read: 8 hours of work) I had a finished illustration.
Here's a zoom file of that tracing thing I did. Some details were lost but overall it turned out great. Misalignment of color is done on purpose.
But, it didn't work that well because, although I was faithful to the clothes the writers wore in their pictures, the drawing was just so colorful without any sense. To make it better, and potentially reduce the print costs, I downsized the color palette to just two colors - red and black.
Now that was something! If printed on nice, yellow-toned paper with texture that could really be an eye catching leaflet/bookmaker or whatever.
Unfortunately, this being Bosnia and Herzegovina, the land of bizarre and unforeseen ways of mind, at that moment somebody in high place puled out the plug on the whole project. Zip! No graphic design, no drawings, no trip to fair altogether.
It was nice doing the job while it lasted. I liked the subject and was hoping to see the illustration printed on a fancy paper... But, as it is, this is going into the drawer, the files are going on a DVD backup and the only use of all this work will be this blog post.
This comic was originally drawn in Bosnian language and was then translated to English by my friend Emir Pasanovic. If you think the joke isn't funny, that's probably his fault. Just kidding :)
