Hi all !
I usually don’t talk much about politics, but it seems than science has never been so politic than these last weeks. Some people just don’t trust science anymore. In a world where people (and even governments) don’t understand scientists, maybe talking about science, about human mistakes and about how scientists actually work could contribute to bridge the gab between scientists and non-scientists… I hope!
Now let’s talk about the work in progress of the fieldwork fail book !
The good news, I finished all rough pages of the book!
What I call rough page is the whole content of the book, before editing and color. Here’s an example.
On the same time, I worked with Jessica Groenendijk who corrects the text. I don’t speak english good enough to skip this part!
Jessica is a scientist I met in Cocha Cashu in Amazonia. She studies giant otters and write books, including children books. And she’s a perfectionist. She was the perfect person for editing texts and make sure the whole book has a consistent style. She understands well the project and is very reactive.
(by the way, I’d like to thank all people who offered me their help for editing! I appreciate a lot).
But what about seeing more the process of building these rough pages?
How I make a page
1) First I exchange emails with the scientist to ask him or her more details about their research and the story. It can be 2 emails or it can be 15 emails, or even instant messaging.
2) When I have all content I need, I sort, select and put together into one page all these pieces of text, and I draw a few sketches for the illustrations. Sometimes it’s easy, when I have a lot of short texts.
Sometimes it’s more complicated, when I have long paragraphs of text. It’s a book with a lot of illustration and the space for text is very limited. The longer the text, the more I need to cut!
3) Then I send the rough page to the scientist for feedback
4) I correct a few details on the page and then I send it back to Jessica for editing. She corrects the content so I can go to the next step -> color !
Also done this month
– Asked and received my ISBN numbers ! I’m now officially a publisher =) An ISBN number is a number used to identify any book in the world. Any book in your library has one!
– Have been in contact with distributors for the French version, and translated some pages to present the project.
– Modify the rough pages to include Jessica’s edits and scientists feedback.
– Color ! Illustration !
I will likely finish this step for all pages in March. Here is how a page looks like with illustration:
Ok that’s all! I need to keep all other things for the next news 🙂 If you like this format of news, I’ll try to make something similar at the end of the month.
Thanks again! See you soon!
Jim
