For this next assignment this week, I decided to create a children’s book cover for the “Mashedup Children’s Book” assignment. Lately I have been excited with the news of there being a Season Two of the Amazon Prime Show Good Omens, so I wanted to create a mash-up book cover that reveals some of the plot without fully giving it away.

For anyone not familiar with it, Good Omens (1990) was written by Neil Gaimen (of Sandman fame) and Terry Prachett (of Discworld fame). They are two of the greatest British authors in recent times, and Good Omens has had a devoted cult following since its release in 1990. Amazon Prime adapted the book into a six-episode show in 2018, starring Michael Sheen as the angel Aziraphale and David Tennant as the demon Crowley. The show is a marvelous adaptation of the book, and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a platonic love story between former enemies, which also has some very dry comic bits in-between. The book does this more than the show, and some parts will have you doubled over laughing as how off-track-without-actually-getting-off-track it is at times. 10/10, glowing recommendation from me!

Anyways, I started by looking around for some Good Omens fanart. There’s quite a bit, since the book came out in the 1990s. However, I found a wonderful piece by Chocodile on Twitter that portrays Crowley driving his 1933 (in the show; it’s a 1926 in the book) Bentley as it’s on fire. This is something that occurred in both the book and show, and I immediately knew the title I wanted to go with. First off, I do not own this fanart! Chocodile is the artist, and I only repurposed it for this project! The original Tweet that contains the art can be found below!

To make the book cover, I downloaded the image then used Pixlr to create a canvas that was approximately the size of a book cover. I wanted to keep the yellow background, because I liked the way it looked and felt it really complimented the children’s book aesthetic. I messed around with shading a bit before deciding it looks better as the original. From there I generated the title “A Demon’s Guide to Stopping the Apocalypse” by Neil Gaimen and Terry Prachett. I personally like to image there’s a sequel out in the world somewhere, titled “An Angel’s Guide to Stopping the Apocalypse” or something like that. This one is from Crowley’s perspective, so that one could be from Aziraphale’s. There could actually be an entire series! “A Witch’s Guide…,” “A Witch Hunter’s Guide…,” “The Antichrist’s Guide…,” etc., etc.! These are all references to the book/show, by the way, so I apologize to anyone unfamiliar with it. Basically it’s a motley crew consisting of an angel, a demon, the antichrist, three human children, a witch, a witch hunter, a former witch hunter, and a medium who team up to stop the apocalypse. It’s quite fun(ny) actually!

Here’s the final product! Please let me know what you think in a comment down below!

For this next assignment this week, I decided to create a children’s book cover for the “Mashedup Children’s Book” assignment. Lately I have been excited with the news of there being a Season Two of the Amazon Prime Show Good Omens, so I wanted to create a mash-up book cover that reveals some of the plot without fully giving it away.

For anyone not familiar with it, Good Omens (1990) was written by Neil Gaimen (of Sandman fame) and Terry Prachett (of Discworld fame). They are two of the greatest British authors in recent times, and Good Omens has had a devoted cult following since its release in 1990. Amazon Prime adapted the book into a six-episode show in 2018, starring Michael Sheen as the angel Aziraphale and David Tennant as the demon Crowley. The show is a marvelous adaptation of the book, and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a platonic love story between former enemies, which also has some very dry comic bits in-between. The book does this more than the show, and some parts will have you doubled over laughing as how off-track-without-actually-getting-off-track it is at times. 10/10, glowing recommendation from me!

Anyways, I started by looking around for some Good Omens fanart. There’s quite a bit, since the book came out in the 1990s. However, I found a wonderful piece by Chocodile on Twitter that portrays Crowley driving his 1933 (in the show; it’s a 1926 in the book) Bentley as it’s on fire. This is something that occurred in both the book and show, and I immediately knew the title I wanted to go with. First off, I do not own this fanart! Chocodile is the artist, and I only repurposed it for this project! The original Tweet that contains the art can be found below!

To make the book cover, I downloaded the image then used Pixlr to create a canvas that was approximately the size of a book cover. I wanted to keep the yellow background, because I liked the way it looked and felt it really complimented the children’s book aesthetic. I messed around with shading a bit before deciding it looks better as the original. From there I generated the title “A Demon’s Guide to Stopping the Apocalypse” by Neil Gaimen and Terry Prachett. I personally like to image there’s a sequel out in the world somewhere, titled “An Angel’s Guide to Stopping the Apocalypse” or something like that. This one is from Crowley’s perspective, so that one could be from Aziraphale’s. There could actually be an entire series! “A Witch’s Guide…,” “A Witch Hunter’s Guide…,” “The Antichrist’s Guide…,” etc., etc.! These are all references to the book/show, by the way, so I apologize to anyone unfamiliar with it. Basically it’s a motley crew consisting of an angel, a demon, the antichrist, three human children, a witch, a witch hunter, a former witch hunter, and a medium who team up to stop the apocalypse. It’s quite fun(ny) actually!

Here’s the final product! Please let me know what you think in a comment down below!

For the assignment (3 stars), I decided to mashup two Dr. Seuss books. I started by thinking about what I children’s books would be fun to put together. I then found found a blue background to imitate the Cat in the Hat background. I then found the grinch and his dog and cut them out. I put the pictures together using the “Photoshop Mix” app on my iPad. I then added the hat and bow tie to the grinch. I could not figure out how to get the hat to fit properly on the grinch’s head which was frustrating. I then found a font that was similar to the type on the Cat in the Hat book. I played with the size and arrangement. I then saved the picture and uploaded it. When I put it on the blog, it became a little blurry which is annoying. I really liked this idea for the assignment and the end result.

Until next time,

Emily

This week’s Mash up assignment was particularly difficult for me to conceptualize.  I read through every option and was not inspired to do any of them right off the bat.  I found one finally that sounded like something I could relate to my Denver theme.  The directions were to mash up a children’s book based on another cultural reference.  I would have to say the most difficult thing about this assignment was thinking about what people thought about this state.  Aside from legal marijuana South Park immediately came to mind.  I searched Barne’s and Noble and Amazon for books and nothing seemed to tie into South Park (which as I reflect back makes sense).  I made a 7AM I phoned a friend who said why not use Snow White?  Perfection!  The south park characters would seem like dwarfs to her so the tie in was exactly what I was looking for.  No one said the inspiration had to be my own.

I researched various programs to use to accomplish merging several different graphics.  After seeing Kirk’s work in the last screen cast I was hoping to learn how to use Adobe.  No such luck was made as you have to pay for this service or download it as a 30 day free trial.  I was working on this project at home and at work so I was unable to download it.  I found Kirk’s work to be inspiring, although it made me feel a bit like I was lacking in the technical department.

I ended up finding a great back ground picture of South Park and I snipped a picture of Snow White.  I wanted to make it seem like she was much larger than the “dwarfs” from South Park.

I then located a picture I liked of the 4 main characters from South Park which I individually inserted into the picture.

I then googled “Disney font” and found a free websites you could enter text and it converted the font in your chosen color. I threw all the pictures together and used Paint on my computer.  I used the “color matcher” (for lack of a better term) to fill in all of the edges that were left from snipping so many different pictures in one.  All of these instructions may sound simple; let me reassure you this is a very time consuming process.  I am not sure if anyone knows of a better program than this??

I love the results and I think it fits in as best as I could make it, with my theme.