Vinko

Hi all. Just letting you know I’ve finally got my first book finished and uploaded to Blurb. It’s a kid’s book called ABC Animals, and features an animal and adjective corresponding with each letter of the alphabet. I was inspired to put the finishing touches to my project from this RB journal.

It’s been about 5 years in the making. It started while I was living and teaching English in Japan. Inspired by it’s popular culture – and my educational work – I commenced illustrating for my book which was originally designed to teach English as a Second Language. Anyway, I moved back home to Australia and ended up in Darwin. I showed a few people my rough draft book and was advised that it would look much better with vector illustrations. So I decided to teach myself the basics of Adobe Illustrator so I could ‘vectorise’ my hand-drawn illustrations. It took me a while but I managed to learn enough to complete my new pictures. I was also advised that some of my pictures were too scary for kids. So I removed and replaced a couple of them to make it more suitable.

Around this time I was just starting out on RedBubble and had a whole mix of different designs up here. I have since separated my ABC Animals designs and my Vinko designs so as not to confuse or offend anyone looking solely for cutesy pictures suitable for all ages.

So here’s an original sketch:

and the final vector illustration:

I’m really happy with how it’s turned out. The print quality is superb and gives my book a really professional finish.

So if you’re interested, firstly check out my book at Blurb (and don’t forget you can get free shipping until the end of November 2009):

and the ABC Animals profile.
Cheers!