Meet Copper & Daisy. These gentle giants are always happy to meet new friends. They love being part of the group.
Copper is a strapping young bull, and never leaves the side of his lovely lady. He’s very much the gentleman with her, and any friend who joins the herd. Just keep a close eye on your pockets if you have treats!
You can’t hear him, since it’s a picture of course, but Copper is chirping to Daisy. He’s found a good patch of something tasty, and he’s telling her to follow him. Many dinos could probably make a lot of noise without ever opening their mouths, like the gurgly hum Copper is making here. But you can see his lovely red throat all blown up like a bullfrog. 🙂
I imagine him sounding a lot like this…
Making progress…
YES!! Done with the color sketches! And just in time too. The group of children’s book writers and illustrators meets this weekend, so I need to get the dummy book printed ASAP. 😀
So everything is done and I’ve prepped everything for printing! 😀 It’s not as simple as you might think.
Instead of printing everything out like the chart you see above, this is what the printing files look like…
Wait a second, some of those are upside down! Yes, getting a book ready for printing requires careful calculation on which pages go where, and which pages go upside down! At least for printing out the dummy book on my home printer. Not sure how it works for the official printing process, but I imagine there is similar calculation going on.
Why? Because the pages are printed, cut, and then layered on top of each other- folded, stitched or stapled down the middle, then glued to the cover. In some cases, like what I did for this little dummy book, I divided the number of pages in half, then made folded booklets out of each half before gluing them down to the card-stock cover.
I’m sure you noticed the chart above is only half the pages? I converted all the separate image files into one convenient PDF. This way I just had to tell it to print, and the printer would handle the double-sided pages. 🙂 Those are nightmare to do manually.
The chart above was the first set, so the bottom right image of Steggy’s tea party would be the exact middle of the first booklet. The Steggy tea party went on top of the stack of images, and then folded them and stitched them down the middle. Voila! One little booklet. I did the same to the other half of illustrations. 🙂
Why make two little booklets instead of just folding all the printed pages in half? Because folding them all together like that distorts the illustration so that they don’t line up along the edges. Making two booklets lessens this distortion a bit so that they line up a little easier. Not perfect, but a lot better than trying to fold all of them together.
Oh yes, and that top left illustration with the Tango dance party. That illustration has half the page blank. The blank area is what I glue down to the card-stock cover, once the booklet is made. 🙂
Next week, I’ll share a quick little video of the final result! 😀
Coming Next Week…
This little dino is a bit shy, but she’ll come out of the bushes for a sweet hug and a small treat. 🙂
Share your guess in the comments! She’s one of the critters over on the critter page. 🙂
Pete's Paleo Petshop 
Woohoo, the dummy book is finished! Congrats. 😀 To think that you’ve already reached the half-way point of getting published, and just a couple of years ago you were working on the first concept sketches. And I’m sure you’ll do fine at the meeting! It’ll be nice to get to show your work to fellow picture book artists.
Planning something special for page #100, you say? Interesting. 😉
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Hi Brownie! Thank you 🙂
Time flies when you’re having fun! 😀 Hopefully it’s the halfway point. We’ll see how long it takes for me to make the little model scenes! That’s the next step.
Speaking of models, I just realized there are only 2 more weeks to post #100! I better stop procrastinating and get to work! 😀
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We are almost done! Good luck on the meeting,i am sure people will like this.And i still don’t get the printing thing,i never knew it was that complex,i thought it would be just printing the pages like a normal paper then getting glued to a cover! Copper and Daisy seems like the second saurs i would get if Picasso is not in the petshop,although taking care of two would be a bummer for space.In the video next week,will you be showing the dummy book,just curious.Hopefully the book will be out in a while,i mean things are going fast as Sonic!
Next one in the train is Rosie,haven’t you done one for her recently,or time is just so fast it’s giving me déjà vu 😀
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Hi Kaprosaurus! Thank you, I’m excited and scared about the meeting at the same time. We’ll see how it goes! 😀
I recorded the video already, so it just needs to be prepped for uploading in time for next week. 🙂 so you’ll get to see the dummy book. It’s the first video I make, so we’ll see how it goes. I’d like to maybe start a YouTube channel so I can post videos about my process. If that would be helpful to others. 🙂
Copper and Daisy are pretty big, bigger than your average cow actually, so even one would require a bit of pasture! I need to work on more size comparison charts for these guys, and more critters in general.
The reason I recycle critters for COTW is so that I can focus on getting the book out. And I forget when I featured each critter. I take a look at how many posts each critter has, then pick a random one out the ones that have been featured fewer times. So I honestly don’t know if it’s been a short while or déja’vu 😀
But I’m planning something special for post #100 😉
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A youtube channel would be great,since it is the only website i’m on for almost an entire day 😀 Although you need to spread the word about your channel,so people will be able to watch your progress before COTWs.Excited for post #100!
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