The Mouse Project - Ah, the excitement of opening my box from Lulu...

Nosey, Chubby and Sprightly were as excited as me for a first look inside!

 

After a great deal of superb work by a whole bunch of terrific people (thanks again so much everyone!), I received my copy from Lulu.com yesterday (it looks GREAT!) and so The Mouse Project is officially launched!

What does that mean?

I have a page devoted to it (see the link next to 'home' at the very top of this blog? Or just click HERE, or vistit TheMouseProject.com) which includes:

• A link to the Lulu.com page where you can preview or buy the book

• An image from each artist used in the book, with links to their websites.

• A free to download PDF 'lite' version of the book that also takes you to all the artists' websites.
It's kind of a preview with one image from each artist (plus the clickable links to their websites).
A portfolio of more than 20 of the very best painters you'll find anywhere online.

• A quick YouTube trailer showing a lot more pieces than the PDF (but you can't blink or you'll miss some!)


Profits to benefit animal shelters.

So without any further explanation, just click HERE and check it out!

And here's the YouTube trailer just for good measure!



And many thanks again to Karen Appleton, Chris Beck, Paul Coventry-Brown, Bill Cramer, Jelaine Faunce, R. Garriott, Claudia Hammer, Jeff Hayes, K Henderson, Diane Hoeptner, Martha Kellar, Meridee Mandio, Carol Marine, Michael Naples, James Neil Hollingsworth, Craig Nelson, Jennifer O'Cualain, John Poon, Roseta Santiago, Dreama Tolle Perry and Lynne Windsor for doing such a great job in helping turn an idea into a better looking reality than I even hoped for!

Click these links to visit my website... SteveWorthingtonArt.com - Sculpture that loves you back
or my Etsy store, CritterVille

Using Lulu to put together 'The Mouse Project'. But not for the free PDF 'Lite' version

Cover layout using Lulu.com

I'm getting pretty excited now I'm seeing how the final book is going to look!
I must say, thanks entirely to the unbelievable enthusiasm from the artists involved, it's going to look fantastic!

Dreama Tolle-Perry's cat Eddie with Sprightly (aka Phyllis in Eddie's world)

I can hardly wait to hit the 'publish' button.
Using Lulu's design templates has been interesting.
I've never self published using online print-on-demand software before, so I'm learning as I go...

Jeffrey Hayes painting laid out using Lulu.com

You can see the page layout options on the left. Text in gray, images in black.

It's really easy to drop things in and move them about, but for some reason has been quite 'buggy' when it comes to formatting text, both when using firefox and safari.
For instance, if I want some words to be bold, and some not, once I've made the changes and then hit 'save', it all turns bold again.
Same thing for changing font size here and there.
So in the end, after some very frustrating hours of tweeking text and watching it tweek itself back again to how it wants to look, I just kind of let the ghosts in the machine decide!
It looks fine, but I'd still rather that it looked fine the way I wanted it to!

I'm using the plain option from the 'photo book' templates

I'm getting the very last paintings over the next week then I'll make final adjustments to clear it for take-off, and hit the magic button.

PDF 'lite' version showing the cover and some page layouts down the side

I'm also putting together the PDF 'lite' version (not using Lulu though) which will have one image per artist even if they painted more (and no close ups showing details of brush strokes or in-progress pics).
I'm trying to keep it under 1 MB. It will look fine on screen (since the images are 72dpi) but it won't be high enough resolution to make good prints from.

Each artist has a clickable link to their website in the PDF 'lite' version

So the free PDF will have 20-something low res images, while the published book will have around 60 images (including detail close ups) and be printed at a much higher resolution.

Mind you, the advantage of the PDF is that:
• it will feature live, click-able links to everyone's websites,
• you'll be welcome to copy and email it,
• it will be FREE.

Must be time for me to take a tea break!

I hope I end up doing everyone's hard work justice!
...Stay tuned...

Click these links to visit my website... SteveWorthingtonArt.com - Sculpture that loves you back
or my Etsy store, CritterVille