Final Publication!

NOTE: THIS ISSUU POST HAS BEEN MARKED POTENTIALLY NSFW DUE TO THE NUDITY IN IT. YOU MAY NOT BE ABLE TO VIEW IT IF YOUR ISSUU ACCOUNT IS SET TO NOT SHOW NSFW POSTS.

It is done! She is finished! The folding didn't go too badly, and I got to try the funky stapler down in the digital print room. 

While I appreciate this definitely could have been better executed, I am happy with the publication I have made. I think it's got a solid idea behind it and it looks quite nice, it could have done with some extra polishing though. When I got it digitally printed I noticed a few lines, scuffs, noise etc. that I hadn't managed to erase in photoshop so I will be paying much closer attention to detail in the future so I don't end up with this problem again. 

My book will be packaged with a watercolour pallette and split pins - to give the truly authentic activity book feel. I wanted to get a real kids style watercolour set but they were all much too big so I settled for a slightly fancier looking one, it still does the job. 

The size of the book is appropriate, and I'm really happy with how the pattern looks on the front and back cover. I did have some trouble trimming the book, as by nature I am not very good at folding or cutting - not good at lining things up at all. Luckily I printed two copies one to make an example doll, so the one I messed up a litte I used for this. The proper one for submission looks fine. 

I think that overall my book reflects the themes of my essay. Particularly the things about ideal beauty, and how the ideal woman is not real but an amalgamation of parts of many different women - often these parts don't match up. The aim of the book is for the viewer to choose their favourite parts but when they're all attached together it looks totally wrong. Hypothetically combining lots of beautiful parts together should make a beautiful whole, but this is just not true!

The pose I chose for the woman was a twisting one, often seen on comic covers or advertisements. Meant to show both the breasts and the butt, because this is what dudes look at/for in a woman... good boobs, good butt. It was pretty hard to translate into papercut though, and it makes the end paper doll look absolutely horrifying as the body parts definitely don't fit together. I think in this context it works because the aim is to make something awful, but I definitely could have thought it through better. The main body part that bugs me on this is the feet! I had no idea what to do with them! I can't really draw feet anyway, but especially when I don't know what pose they should be in. I settled for the underside of the foot, as the whole bottom half is meant to be the back of a woman. They look bad though. 

I made an example doll, just to show an option of what this would look like completed and she is just beautiful (horrifying). But it showed that painting over the pieces works, you can add any colour to it! Another thing I found is that the papers quite tough so it can be hard to push the split pins through. If I had more time I would have thought about this and tested stocks, or put holes in the paper so slip the pins through. She is posable too, and that's pretty fun!