The Great Illustrator Project

A while back ago, I was emailed by a guy named Tom Anderson about his new project. I'm really excited to talk about this project and I knew that a lot of my viewers would be interested in it.

I especially think this project will be of interest to my Children's picture book authors and to my viewers who can't wait to fulfill their dreams of writing illustrated novels. 

Tom's project (which you kind find here if you want to cut to the chase,) is all about making author's live's easier. The project will take archives of artwork from dozens of authors (45 artists last I checked!) and let you use them in a functional app, to sew together story and art. 

 Beautiful!

I can see many facets to this project, and many ways it can be used to your advantage. Here are a few sweet and to-the-point bullets:

• A freeing, yet economically efficiant way of illustrating your novel with original designs
• Letting the little writers in your life get free reign of their imaginations (go creativity!)
• familiarizing yourself with art, and gaining a better perspective of the vast spectrum of art (not just pencil's anymore folks!) 
• Creative presentations
• Rough draft story boarding (Ok, this is kind of a 'creative presentation, but it's definitely different because I put it on a different bullet point. *winks*)

The best thing about a creative app like this, is that art is endless and it's expression infinite. If you can come up with a good way to use it, that isn't listed....guess what? You can use it that way.

Seriously. 

If you've been around me long enough, you know that I'm usually completely incapable of  'average.' Even if the road less traveled does kick my butt from time to time, creativity (and being different in general) is a big part of my life, and it will always remain so. I like the idea for this app because it takes a typically hard industry (that being, the art of words) and applies it to it's opposite (technical mathematics, in the form of an app.) 

If you'd like to support this endeavor, and receive goodies in return, check out the official kickstarter and donate!

Click here

UPDATE: We've raised $8,000 so far! The higher we go, the more the app will have (for specifics, see the kickstarter!)

If you would like to hear an almost-author's view of how this app could have been applied if she'd had it a year earlier, click here.