Posted by Dave Bull at 10:01 AM, October 9, 2009
Here we go! The 'Your First Print' RichMedia eBook is now ready to go!
Reaction to the trial versions that I passed around to a few friends and 'testers' over the past week has been very encouraging. They have found the book to be not only a very useful resource for this craft, but to be something interesting and attractive in its own right.
The book is crammed with multi-media - dozens of audio and video clips - in addition to a great many detailed photographs, covering every aspect of the process of making a print.
The book is nominally aimed at the complete beginner, but there are very few experienced printmakers who would not enjoy (and perhaps learn something from!) this volume.
For more information on the eBook, please visit this page of my Mokuhankan webshop. Linked from that page, you can find a sample file to download and try out, containing more than 20 complete pages from the book, including videos and sample audio files.
I have also created a 'support area' where owners of this eBook can access additional information, ask questions, and share their experiences of woodblock printmaking as outlined in the book. This support section - dedicated strictly to these Japanese traditional techniques - is already 'up and running', and can be found here.
I look forward to hearing what everybody has to say about this book ... it has taken quite a bit of work to put together, but it has been a lot of fun.
(Thanks also to [Baren] member Mark Mason, for his professional assistance with some of the graphics in the book. Meow!)
Dave,
I want the CD and the download...I am out the door for a trip so will do it as soon as I return.
What a fantastic thing this is for educators. "Thank you thank you thank you
Barbara
Congratulations, Dave!
This is an outstanding, first-class innovation in publishing. Your usage of the available technology is masterful. You have re-defined the concept of "textbook".
Marc
Wow Marc ... thanks!
I certainly don't know about 'masterful' though! The way that we use text and illustrations together has been pretty well worked out for centuries now. Just how much of one, and how much of the other, and what kind of balance they have with each other - these things have been explored pretty well, and many standard 'patterns' have been developed (think of a typical newspaper page, and how it has evolved over the years since such a thing was first created).
But once you throw into the mix - not just one, but two new methods of delivering the information (audio and video) - now all 'fighting' with each other on a single page ... well, I don't really have a clue how to sort them all out. I'm a basically conservative person, so in this project, text rules the roost. The text is the base, and the other stuff is all 'extra'.
I don't believe by any means that this is the best way to do it, and I think that as more innovative people explore this sort of project, a lot of very interesting approaches should be developed.
But yeah, I think this one is not so bad, even though it is kind of rudimentary. (I would like to have included a lot more video, but kept the total length in bounds so that the embedded version would fit on a single CD.)
Thanks (again!) Marc for the nice comments!
