My new comic related Business card

The biggest children’s book fair in the world is happening every year in Bologna, Italy. A few hours away from where I am currently staying so I have decided to go, likely a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I don’t think I would fly across half the planet to go there (New Zealand is 18,000km away from Italy). But because I am nearby, I have decided to go and make the most of it. I am going to meet fellow authors and illustrators, catchup with publishers, mingle with other people and enjoy the amazing Italian food.

Until now, I did not put any pressure on myself for this event, my main priority, right now, is to progress final pages for book 4 of the Miles and Jones series. But that recently changed when I decided to prepare a new business card for myself…

Suddenly I had to come up with a concept, turn it into a reality, send it to the printer and receive the cards before the 10th of April…

Previous business cards

I had designed business cards with my previous artist’s name but they are now obsolete. I still like them but they don’t really fit with what I am doing anymore.

Looking for a new concept

A business card is pretty simple, right? A company’s name, some contact details and some graphics - Easy! But I started to overthink, as I often do, I spent hours on different concepts to finally come back to square 1…Anyway, I started with an image of Daddy bear and his heroes, some of the characters who accompanied me since I was a child.

But when I test printed it at home, I realized that the card would be overcrowded with too many details. So I went back to a simpler concept of Daddy bear in his studio.

Uninspiring to be honest so I looked for something else.

And after all, I am a comic book artist so why not trying to do a comic on a 85mm x 55mm piece of paper… So I sketched this little story.

But again when I test printed it, it was way too small, people would need a magnifying glass to read it, not ideal!

So I tried to limit myself to three panels, something dynamic, fun and positive. I don’t know where it came from but I thought about this bouncing creature. That would allow me to do some movements and exaggeration, to demonstrate some of my sequential art skills. Here was my first draft.

Which I refined further and transferred onto watercolor paper to be painted.

Final painting

I wasn’t sure which color scheme to use but suddenly I thought that the bouncing creature could actually be a rainbow maker and that each of his bounce would create a rainbow…

I don’t know where these ideas came from but I thought they were pretty fun so I turned these three panels into another story by choosing to paint the bouncing creature with rainbow colors.

So, here is the front,

And the back.

I have just received the business cards on a nice thick paper, I am pretty happy as they are fun, colorful and telling a short story in a comic format. I am not happy with the typo though…

I hope you are doing well, take care and watchout for the rainbow makers!