Here it is, all finished and bringing moist `Book-Luvin' to the far reaches of Port Stephens. Port Stephens Council's new Mobile Library. This has been my biggest job so far, literally, and I'm `happy as all buggery' it's turned out so well. You sure as hell can't miss it out in the open.
I had the biggest head swell at the low key launching at Raymond Terrace last week. I was grinning from ear to ear taking the photos below when someone from the Library staff recognized me and soon I was set upon by exuberant folk in suits and ties congratulating me and asking me how I made the graphics. I had to look down and check I was still wearing pants as lately I've had several dreams where I get a new job or I'm doing well with work but look down and find I'm not wearing any pants.
I have to give Many Thanks with generous dollops of chocolate sauce to Little Green Frog Marketing for the job. The Froggies were fantastic in their trust in me to get the job done and I am so pleased they thought of me to do it in the first place. Jamie, Prue, Stephanie, Katie and um... the new girl...damn, I've forgotten her name. Anyway I'd come up with several concepts for the exterior design but they were all too close to other Mobile Libraries on the road. I had this idea on the spot and very excitedly scribbled it up on the white board in the meeting, tripping verbally over myself to explain what I was seeing in my head. Thankfully the Froggies saw it too and sold the concept to the client who were very keen as well.
The idea was that it was to look like a quality book illustration. I was going to draw them up but if I'd gone down that path I'd still be working on the job now. As it was the deadline was Christmas and the job was given to me in late November 08. The only way I could see of doing it was to photograph a wide variety of people all looking like they were tumbling over themselves happily reading a book.
I did a test for the clients of Tony, one of the regulars at the Last Drop Cafe in Newcastle East. I Photographed him, cut him out in Photoshop and then painted him over with a raspy style brush with my graphics tablet and sketched in some pencil lines to make him look like he'd been sketched and painted onto a canvas. Then he was composited together with some motion blurred trees, blue sky and fluffy clouds. And that turned out to be the best way to do it.
Then there was several weeks of photographing friends and family. Directing them into many different positions, happily snapping away and pointing at them until they asked me to leave their house. Beyond making the tight deadline another stress was having a powerful enough computer to create a layered image that in the end would be about fourteen meters long and three and a half meters or so high. The only specs given by the Library manufacturer were the truck plans and the instructions that the art work should be twenty percent of the printed schematics. Oh goody. And me being numerically retarded.
I had three days off for Christmas and two for the New Years eve but beyond that I was head down, bum up trying to get this job finished on time and looking good. Eventually it was all finished on time for my deadline of the 15th of January. There were a few tweaks but on the whole everything was Tickety Boo.
So. All done. Now for my next trick...
Huge Thanks to my Mum and Dad for posing, Tony, Monique, Dougie, The Gumpins; Steve and Wendy and Zoe and Lexie, Felix, Huali, Xio, Megan and lil Digby, the Wilbert kids, Eden, Benny and Ruby and all those who posed for me but didn't make it into the final cut - Sorry Lee.
I can remember coming through some of these towns on family holidays as an impatient, weird little kid along with a very easily teased younger sister. The towns back then in the late seventies, were slowly dying and the young folk with their dreams and ambitions were leaving and moving to the cities where there was a better chance of a living.
But now it’s changing and artists and entrepreneurs, travelers etc are returning and bringing life back to these little towns. The internet sure has helped and the new rollout of fibre optics around Australia is going to be amazing for these rural centres.
The further west we’ve come, the redder the earth. But it’s contrasted with the intense green of fresh grass and scrub. There’s been a fair bit of rain out here lately and it looks like some of the grass and scrub is in shock. They’ve been brown for so long, they’ve forgotten what it’s like to be green. In some places there’s flat red earth, overlaid with a rich purple of metallic oxide in amongst deep green grasses, ashen grey mulga and snow gums. There’s the odd wattle and small native flowers scattered about but it’s still a bit early in the year for most of the flowers. It the rain keeps up, the west of NSW will look girly pretty around September and October.
Maybe it’s because I’m getting older but the history of the area is far more interesting to me than what it was when I was a kid. Could be also the museums are better presented than when I was last here as well. There’s still the old dry facts hanging about, statistics, dates and so and so did this in dum, dum, dum. But there’s also a lot more emphasis in the museums on the characters, crimes and whacky events in the area as well.
That’s it for the moment. I’m having a good time. There’s been no arguments or dramas and I’ve been enjoying listening to music on the iPod and staring at the countryside as we pass though it.
Until next time - eat your greens, suck your reds and whittle your blues away.
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