pop UP!

RIGHT its been a tricky start, and what may seem simple may actually be extremely fiddly - but ive started my pop-up experimentation. I began just in white and have only recently moved on to colour, this was to concentrate purely on the shape and cut of the pop-ups, and to see what could be achieved through the simplicity of light and shadow. When moving on to colour I have kept it blocked - one baby step at a time! - but tried to introduce some of my own style through the colour and textures.

Some practice folds -

when working in white I've been looking at the work of David Pelham and his book 'Trail' as well as the series white picture books by Robert Sabuda. All pop-up books are first built in a similar way to a dummy book called a white dummy,  working from a rough design and then building a white dummy concentrating first on the engineering of the pop-ups and then illustrating after. 

In this book Pelham uses the cut of the paper, the engineering, and how it transpires with the light all to his advantage. Although it may look very complicated its all based on a series of simple folds (but gets very complicated when its all put together!) . It was really good to look at when beginning the project as I want to really feel comfortable with the engineering before I start incoroprating illustrations into them as well, but hopefully thats not far off :) I'm having fun introducing colour at the moment!