Getting the hang of inDesign one cell at a time
/I got off my day gig a little early and expected to have some extra time for my book, but it turns out that my hustling actually created more stress than usual. It took me an hour to recover. I ended up unwinding with a cup of Peets decaf while I watched my partner brew up some Hippocrates soup. The only things missing from her soup was eye of newt and whisker of witch. It smelled good, but I didn’t have a drop. I do intermittent fasting and eat only during the period of 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., five hours a day. That means fasting for 19 hours a day. It ain’t fun but it keeps my glucose levels in the normal zone.
By 7 PM I had recuperated and got back to inDesign and put more text and images into my project. It helps to layout the book — I can see what’s working and see what needs more work. Seeing all of the thumbnails spread out feels really good. I know that I’m getting somewhere.
Here are some of some the lessons I’ve learned so far while doing this project.
Before you start drawing and painting, decide on the layout. Will it be portrait or landscape?
Once youve determined the layout, allow for two sizes of images, one for full page coverage and another for partial coverage, a squarer image perhaps. The images should allow space for text.
Use the same color palette for all images. This may be obvious, but I didn’t do it. I’m feeling the pain now as I see that most of the coloring is inconsistent. If I want these images to be consistent (I do), I’m facing hours of repainting.
Try to draw the characters pretty much the same every time. My characters look like teenagers in some scenes and look like children in others. For my next project I’m going to create a reference set of character poses that I can use from beginning to end.
Here’s a shot of the thumbnails in inDesign.