Today I am bringing you part of the work I did for the Florida Libraries Youth Program (FLYP). Each year they have a pair of themes, one aimed at K - 5th grade and one at older children. A great deal of art and elements are needed for the program, including posters, bookmarks, coloring pages, connect the dots, membership cards, and tons of art for the instructor manual.
One of the K - 5 themes I have worked on was Book Feast. They didn't know what they wanted to do beyond that, so when I suggested monsters eating and using books and various library-related media. They jumped at my suggestion. Little did I know that I was embarking on a wacky adventure because of my idea of monsters and books... unfortunately I can't really talk about any of that stuff just yet. I can show you the chapter header art for the instructor's manual. Of all the art I produced for Book Feast, these were some of the few pieces that did not see some sort of revision.
© Florida Department of LibrariesSince the theme was Book Feast, all the chapters had food names. This thankfully allowed me a launchpad for ideas. So often, with projects, the themes or elements are vague ideas that do not directly translate into tangible visuals. For the most
I have put my piece away for a few days to get a fresh look at it. I should be posting it here soon, even though the deadline for it is still over a month away. I have started working on additional pieces based on the theme... too bad I can only submit one!
See you back here on Friday! Until then...
As a former children's library associate (4 or 5 years), I'm very familiar with FLYP and the often crappy artwork that accompanies it. It's really nice to see some good artwork for it, for a change, and I'm happy to see someone I know doing it.
ReplyDeleteI did some FLYP related art for the county library system I used to work at, a few years ago, because we were so unhappy with the stuff the state sent us. We did a time travel theme, with steampunk stuff for the kids and music themed stuff for the teens. I still have the posters up on my secondary deviantart page:
http://wickedeyedesigns.deviantart.com/art/OLS-Rock-the-Ages-Kids-52041085
http://wickedeyedesigns.deviantart.com/art/OLS-Rock-the-Ages-Teens-52040695
Hey there Melissa! Those FLYP posters are super neat! FLYP was real hit or miss for us. We had little control of what was done. We just tried to do the best we could with the corner we were painted into. To do this monster theme work was a real challenge and had to do tons of revisions and really fight for some stuff. I was not as eager to repeat that on other years. We have not don any new work for them in some time, they either are now doing it internally, found another design group or left it to the counties. I am a little curious. Need to pick your brain the next time you have a painting session or at my show opening in a couple weeks.
ReplyDeleteSure. Or drop me an email. :) Mercuralis(at)bynkii(dot)com
ReplyDeleteAnd I know what you mean. Really. Working from the county level and trying to talk to FLA was sometimes a real pain in the butt. And FLYP was always such a HUGE monster of a thing to do. We pretty much started working on pulling it together in December, and by the time the summer program was over we all wanted to drop. I loved it, but it's so huge... and the state seldom sent us as much stuff as we needed, and a lot of the time their book lists and themes were overdone and outdated and we had to come up with stuff on our own. I think "Book Feast" has been a theme like... five or six times in the last twenty or so years?
(I'm heading out to the Bizarre Bizarre at RR Square on Saturday. Hopefully it won't be crazy busy like First Fridays?)
Yeah, none of that even remotely surprises me. Book Feast was by far my favorite, but like I said it took a lot out of me to make it fun for me... and I was censored. But I will go into that stuff at another time and place. The client was happy so I was successful in my duties.
ReplyDeleteHuh... never even heard of Bizarre Bizarre... must be new or I am even more out of the loop. Should be less crazy then FF... hopefully?