Swap! - Text Overlays for Foreign Editions

When it comes to the digital 'finishing' work on my books, it's the cutting out that's the real chore but, once that's done, I feel as though I have finished. Not so! There's the final, fussy job of doing the text overlays. Sigh...

All text has to be created separately from the main artwork, because of translations: you can't have English words embedded in the illustration and then hope to sell the book for foreign editions. This goes for all wording, but I am not talking about the regular text you can see above, but the little, incidental details: can you see the word 'DOG' on the bowl? 

There are quite a few more on the spread below:

Most illustrators don't have to worry about the text overlays - the design team at the publishers sort out all that, when they place the other text. However, because I am daft enough to create my artwork in pastels, the bits of text which are intrinsic to the images don't work very well if they too are not in pastels: the wording sort of floats above the illustration.

It's not practical to do the text overlays in actual pastels, so I do it digitally, in 'pretend' pastels, using an old version on Corel Painter, which does a pretty good job of emulating the marks of my pastels, particularly after I have scanned in a sample of the actual paper I draw onto, so the texture matches. This is the text from the classroom door.

It's a boring and fiddly job, but looks much better. Of course, when it comes to the foreign translations, I have no control, so they just bung on ordinary text. Hey-ho - there are times when you just have to let go... 

For the children's dance studio below, I've done the whole sign as an overlay, including the little drawings of the kids, because foreign translations can take up more space than English text. This way, it allows for the little figures to be removed if necessary, to fit in a more wordy name - clever eh?!

Anyway, I am now done, done, done (hurrah!) and a DVD of all the finished artwork has been sent back to my Art Director, who will be busy this week, dropping all the text into its final position and sorting out the final bits of design work (spine, title page, dedications, blurb, bar codes...).

The next stage should be the colour proof. That's the truly exciting bit, when it all looks real!