Author
I was really happy with my final image for ADVERTISE. For a fun distraction, I used Photoshop to animate the image as well. When I first started work on my cartoon ASL Dictionary, many of my friends thought I should have every word animated. The outrageous length of time it took me just to finish this small little gif more than proved how hard animating over 1 000 words would be.
Past advertisements showed my book held up on display. I wanted the next ad to show the dictionary fitting on a shelf, like a helpful addition to the customer’s ASL resources. Unlike a textbook or a biography, I created a dictionary. A tool to support the learning process, not to direct it. To make it stand out in the collection, I added the tagline IN COLOUR. A nostalgic call back to the IN COLOR title placed on old television sitcoms when they transferred out of black and white. The first draft was completed on January 18, 2021.
Tellwell Talent Publishing would soon be constructing an Author’s website for my book. Until that time, I needed to keep my current website, EJM ART updated. I focused on the page for my ASL DICTIONARY. Studying the sale of other published books, I noticed some websites allowed the viewer the option of a peek inside. Using Adobe Photoshop for animation, I took eight pages from my book and placed them inside the frame of a mobile phone to create a quick animated look inside my dictionary. January 9, 2021, I had the .gif completed and placed inside the website.
A visual update to my first advertisement, I expanded the image to include samples of all three devices Tellwell Talent was formatting the dictionary for, the Kindle, the Kobo, and Mobile Phone/E-reader. The three devices also allowed the ad to show more than just the cover of the book. Maintaining the selling point of my dictionary being portable, I used the image of hands to hold the books up. Finishing the picture also inspired its tagline, “Over 1 000 Words in the Palm of Your Hand”. The first draft was posted on Twitter.
