One of the things I enjoy doing that isn’t web related is illustration, and last week I was asked to create a set of illustrations and a book prop for Patrick‘s short-film, The Christmas Bunny. The film was shot this weekend past, and is in the editing stages, but I thought I’d share some photos of the prop and illustrations.

See the rest of the shots on flickr.

Making the book

For those interested, the illustrations were drawn on white bristol board and inked with fast-dry black pigment liner, and then scanned and printed on to light-weight (80gsm) cream paper and cut to size with a craft knife. I then had some trouble figuring out the best way to attach the pages to the ancient book we found on ebay, without permanently damaging it.

I ended up bracing the illustration and text pages with extra blank sheets on either side, binding the edge with masking tape. Then I used some partially dried glue stick (pritt-like) which I could pinch pieces off and roll into sausage shapes and press into the masking-tape spine, to create a malleable, but strong, join for the pages to move on. No super-glues I had seemed to work as well as this rather Blue Peter-esque technique. The best thing about the glue-stick solution is that it rubs off the paper anywhere that it shows, so the join is seamless.

It was a nice little project and I’m really glad to have been able to contribute to the film in some way. The first two illustrations and title are used as the introduction to the film, with a narrative voice-over and music, and the final illustration is used as the outro. Hopefully I’ll get to do some more illustration work in the future.