I'm back... with some fun new projects!

[iamtheblues]

Very glad to have you and your simplicity gracing these pages once more. I'm amazed how you can make so much from so little - love the underground scene at Regents Park.
I'm off to Lulu.com to check out Narwhal Plays the Nyckelharpa.

[Simon Beck]

Very glad to have you and your simplicity gracing these pages once more. I'm amazed how you can make so much from so little - love the underground scene at Regents Park.
I'm off to Lulu.com to check out Narwhal Plays the Nyckelharpa.

DON'T buy it yet - it's not finished (the other books are though)!

[pauland]

DON'T buy it yet - it's not finished (the other books are though)!

How can you have it ready to buy on Lulu if it's not ready?

[Simon Beck]

How can you have it ready to buy on Lulu if it's not ready?

It's work in progress - I had some production problems with "Bob" so I thought I'd make sure that the upload works as the book progresses! The reason it's "available to buy" is that the ISBN number isn't accessible if you don't make the book available, and I needed to make sure that the back cover design worked.

The typeface for "Narwal Plays the Nyckelharpa" was designed by a Japanese designer - I asked if he would let me use it, and he very kindly gave me permission to use it for free because he liked my illustrations! I had been looking for something similar to the 1960s Ladybird Books typeface, and that one was just right.

[Simon Beck]

Very glad to have you and your simplicity gracing these pages once more. I'm amazed how you can make so much from so little - love the underground scene at Regents Park.

I originally had the idea of using a real Underground map, but when I visited the Transport For London website, it turned out that they charge £120 for permission to use it, and you can't modify it at all. So I made my own armadillo-shaped version...

[Simon Beck]

Here is a sample from a work in progress, called "Narwhal Plays the Nyckelharpa". As you can probably see, it's an alphabet book, with each letter having its own animal (upper case initial) and musical instrument (lower case), plus a few facts about each one. The instruments are traced by hand from photos found on the Web, and the animals are (obviously) drawn freehand. I wanted a typeface like the one used by Ladybird Books in the 1960s, but I couldn't find one that was quite right. Finally I found this one: http://www.dafont.com/resiple.font, so I e-mailed its designer, Tomoyuki Watanabe, to ask if I could use it. He replied saying that I could use it for free because he like my graphics so much!

[amoore]

Love them, love them, love them.

Allison

[gwpriester]

Fun and creative stuff, Simon.

[Simon Beck]

Hi!

I'm back again. I am still working on the animal/instrument alphabet book, but in the meantime I have illustrated Edward Lear's "The Owl and the Pussy-Cat", and created a website with low-res images of the complete content of all my finished books so far, and descriptions of the process of creating each one. There are also links so you can buy the actual books (very nicely-produced saddle-stitched paperbacks with glossy covers).

www.twinkleshark.co.uk

Meanwhile, are there any agents (or even publishers) out there who would like to contact me? Just wondering...

[Simon Beck]

Just for fun, I offered to help spruce up what is probably the best guitar blog on the Web - "Guitarz". Here is the site's old banner (top) and my redesigned one, with new logo and "greenburst" background based on the finish of a vintage Burns guitar. I sent the site's owner half a dozen font variants and then a range of background colours based on vintage guitars.



Total design time: about 45 minutes. Using Xara, of course...