![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/www.nosegraze.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/leather-bound-tairen-soul.jpg\")
<\/p>\nIn May I mentioned how I wanted to make my own special edition book<\/a>. Well, I did it!!<\/p>\n To recap: this idea started when I read about someone else making their own special edition book<\/a>. I became obsessed with the idea and set out to do something similar for my favourite series, Tairen Soul by C.L. Wilson.<\/p>\n First thing: what exactly did I want to achieve in terms of specs?<\/p>\n After knowing what<\/strong> I wanted to accomplish, the next step was figuring out if I could make this project happen. That involved two things:<\/p>\n I could have just hired someone to do this for me, but I wanted to have some sort of creative contribution to the project. The most feasible option felt like handling the InDesign work. So I set out teaching myself how to use it. (I did end up with more creative contributions in the end, but I\u2019ll touch on that later!)<\/p>\n I decided if I couldn\u2019t make InDesign work, I wouldn\u2019t do the project at all. Luckily I got enough of a handle on it that I felt I could move forward!<\/p>\n I needed to both: 1) find people who could help me implement this project; and 2) determine what the overall cost might look like, to make sure it was something I was willing to pay.<\/p>\n I created a big spreadsheet of printers, bookbinders, and illustrators. I filled this out as I contacted people, noting things like:<\/p>\n This was a lot<\/strong> of work and there were times I almost gave up.<\/p>\n Finding a printer was hard, because most of the options weren\u2019t suitable for me.<\/p>\n I couldn\u2019t work with one of those big companies that requires you place huge orders. So many companies would bail as soon as I mentioned I only wanted to print one book (and I don\u2019t blame them).<\/p>\n I couldn\u2019t work with on demand printers, because I wanted high quality paper, and I didn\u2019t want a fully bound book. I wanted sheets that could be given to the bookbinder.<\/p>\n What I really wanted was a small, independent printer, but those are really hard to search for on Google, especially when you don\u2019t need them to be local to you. Anywhere in the UK would suit me.<\/p>\n In the end, I actually found the perfect bookbinder first, and she referred me to a printer who\u2019s local to her, and she works with often. It ended up being perfect<\/strong> to work with a printer and bookbinder who already know each other and have a relationship. The printer knew exactly how to give the pages to the bookbinder, etc.<\/p>\n I wanted full colour interior illustrations. Finding artists for this was also a long process and an extremely careful balancing act.<\/p>\n That\u2019s insanely difficult!! There are a lot of amazing artists out there, but it\u2019s hard to find people who can meet all three of those points.<\/p>\n Once again I was using the spreadsheet. I noted down every artist I was interested in, their portfolio, their price points, their availability.<\/p>\n In the end I picked two illustrators who were absolutely perfect for the job:<\/p>\n I booked both of them about 2-3 months in advance, which mostly set the timeline for my project.<\/p>\n I wanted a cartographer to redraw the interior map, to use as the endpapers. I think the cartographer was actually the first person I found! I went with Rafal Zatwarnicki from New Horizons<\/a>. He did an absolutely amazing job.<\/p>\n The details on it are outstanding. He even drew me a little tairen!<\/p>\n I did everything in parallel. I wanted to make sure I had all the pieces in play before committing. I didn\u2019t want to commission a bunch of artwork just to find out later I couldn\u2019t actually ever find a printer to make this work.<\/p>\n But once I had everyone lined up, it was all systems go!<\/p>\n While waiting in line for the illustrators, I spent most of my time on two things:<\/p>\n The interior formatting took a lot of time, and there was a lot of trial and error. My process ended up being this:<\/p>\n Expanding on point 5\u2026 there was a lot of \u201cfixing\u201d involved. The conversion process wasn\u2019t perfect, and as a result some of the line breaks in the document were messed up. So I basically went through the text line by line, comparing the InDesign document to my physical copy of Lord of the Fading Lands. I made sure the text was formatted the same way, line breaks were in the same place, etc.<\/p>\n Other than fixing glaring errors, there were also some stylistic fixes to be applied, to avoid things like orphaned words. Then of course every time I redid step 1 (change margins, font size, etc.), I also had to redo step 5!! (Lesson: make sure you\u2019re committed to your margin and typography settings before formatting the whole book.)<\/p>\n At some point I decided to make my own \u201csketchy\u201d illustrations. Originally I thought about hiring someone to do this, but it was a lot harder for me to find someone who would do quick, fast black and white sketches, than a full colour illustrator. I actually have a background in digital art and drawing anyway, so I thought surely I could pull something<\/em> together\u2026<\/p>\n This decision ended up being the best one I made and really transformed this project into a whole other thing.<\/p>\n I used to be \u201can artist\u201d. In middle school I got Photoshop for the first time and I was drawing my Neopets. This was my first foray into digital art. In high school I got my first Wacom tablet and drew fan art for video games (RuneScape, mostly). Back then my dream was to become a concept artist for video games!<\/p>\n At some point, I abandoned art in favour of web development. (I started coding when I made my own portfolio website to showcase my artwork, then never stopped.) I didn\u2019t draw for 10 years.<\/p>\n But doing these black and white illustrations myself reignited my love of art! Once I finished the black and white sketches, I moved on to making my own full colour illustrations. I ended up including some of them in the final book!<\/p>\n This project was always a lot of fun, and was absolutely worth the expense paid. But rediscovering this love of digital painting really took it to a whole other level. I don\u2019t think I would have found this hobby again if not for this project.<\/p>\n Designing the spine and cover of the book was actually an afterthought for me. I had originally hoped to just ask the bookbinder to go with some generic design using the tools she has available. But in August I visited her bindery and we talked a lot about options, colours, designs, etc. After that conversation I decided to properly design something myself.<\/p>\n I struggled with this because that kind of spine design work is not<\/strong> my speciality! It\u2019s very different from the digital artwork I\u2019m used to. In the end, I used a combination of some design tools I knew the binder already had, and something I mashed together using stock I purchased.<\/p>\n The mockup I gave her looked like this:<\/p>\n I think it would have been cool to have someone do a custom design for me that also involved tairen wings (if you\u2019re not famliar with the book: a tairen is a large cat \u2014 like a lion \u2014 with dragon-esque wings), but again, by this point I was feeling a little \u201cfinding people fatigue\u201d.<\/p>\n Overall though I\u2019m super happy with how it turned out!<\/p>\n I started this project in May and it all came to a close six months later, on November 16th.<\/p>\n This book is everything I hoped and imagined it would be. It has 8 full colour illustrations, a full colour map, and 13 black and white sketches.<\/p>\n I\u2019m already deep in planning the rest of the series (four more books!!). I\u2019ll be doing a lot more of my own artwork for the rest of the series, but am still commissioning a few pieces (some of which are already done!).<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a first look at some of the pieces by me:<\/p>\n And here are some of the commissioned ones:<\/p>\nWhat did I want to do?<\/h2>\n
\n
\n
Determining the viability of the project<\/h2>\n
\n
\n
Learning InDesign<\/h3>\n
Finding suppliers<\/h3>\n
\n
Finding a printer and binder<\/h4>\n
Finding illustrators<\/h4>\n
\n
![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/www.nosegraze.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/tairen-soul-rain-tairen.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/www.nosegraze.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/tairen-soul-mage.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/www.nosegraze.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/tairen-soul-rain.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/www.nosegraze.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/tairen-soul-bel-chained.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/www.nosegraze.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/tairen-soul-annoura.jpg\")
<\/a>Finding a cartographer<\/h4>\n
![\"Close](\"https:\/\/www.nosegraze.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/tairen-soul-map-closeup-700x527.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nGoing ahead<\/h2>\n
\n
Interior formatting<\/h3>\n
\n
![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/www.nosegraze.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/tairen-soul-prologue.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nBlack and white sketches<\/h3>\n
![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/www.nosegraze.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/tairen-soul-keflee-set-527x700.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/www.nosegraze.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/tairen-soul-cat-sketch.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/www.nosegraze.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/tairen-soul-rain-ellie-moonlight.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/www.nosegraze.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/tairen-soul-rain-ellie-wager.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\nDesigning the spine and cover<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nosegraze.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/tairen-soul-spine-design-150x700.png\")
<\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n![\"Cover](\"https:\/\/www.nosegraze.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/tairen-soul-cover-design-467x700.png\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nA finished product<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nosegraze.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/leather-tairen-soul-slipcase-527x700.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/www.nosegraze.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/leather-tairen-soul-tailband.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n![\"Digital](\"https:\/\/www.nosegraze.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/gaelen.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"Digital](\"https:\/\/www.nosegraze.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/tairen-wedding.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"Fey'Bahren](\"https:\/\/www.nosegraze.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/fey-bahren-467x700.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.nosegraze.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/tairen-fire-swimming.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"Digital](\"https:\/\/www.nosegraze.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/ellie-and-dorian.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"Digital](\"https:\/\/www.nosegraze.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/great-mirror-of-navahele.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"Digital](\"https:\/\/www.nosegraze.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/my-dearest-annoura.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"Illustration](\"https:\/\/www.nosegraze.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/commander-silverleaf.jpg\")
<\/a>![](\"https:\/\/www.nosegraze.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/next-life-700x525.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nosegraze.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/tairen-soul-demon.jpg\")
![\"Ellie\"](\"https:\/\/www.nosegraze.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/ellie.jpg\")
![\"Elfeya\"](\"https:\/\/www.nosegraze.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/elfeya.jpg\")