Saturday, December 31, 2005

happy new year

christmas is over, new year's eve today. anna and i had a pretty good time at christmas.

rob and i went on a quick photoshoot on christmas evening. i took my lomo and pentax and we drove along the coast near my parents' place - a fairly wilderness place on the firth of thames. the area is renowned for birdwatching, so i wanted to take some photos of the 'hides' that birdwatchers use to watch birds from. they are shacks with slit windows that you can stick your camera / binoculars through.

the day was overcast so i should get some nice somber shots. i experimented with using fill-in flash, which will theoretically render the shacks in stark relief agains a dark grey.

in the process, i finished two rolls of film that have been in my camera for a fair while. i always love developing that kind of film because there are always images you have forgotten.

hope to have some images online soon.

on the headphones: 'sunshine (feat. jess chambers)' by rhian sheehan, from the album 'tiny blue biosphere'. www.rhiansheehan.com

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

merry christmas

not too much happening in the art / text world of andrew killick. i'm happy with the way 'epilogue' has gone - i have just a few copies left.

in a couple of weeks i'm going to add a new 'free stuff' section to my website where i will include an mp3 download of an interview i did on rhema.

there is quite a bit of new material on intraspace - my book review blog: including a review of c.s. lewis's sci-fi book 'that hideous strength' (see, even i have tie-ins to the narnia movie).

i'm looking forward to christmas - have some down time, anna and i will visit my folks and i'm planning to take all my cameras with me. hopefully that will result in macro, double-exposure, underwater, vignetted visual madness.

so, merry christmas. have a good one.

on the headphones: what the heck is this? some kind of french folk music.

Saturday, December 03, 2005

nuver blog

that's right kids, i now have another blog. i've called it 'intraspace' and it's somewhere for me to review books, films and music.

not only that but happy punters can buy the stuff i review direct from the blog through a link to amazon! tremendous.

first up is a review of the classic miles davis autobiography...

go there by clicking on the link to the right, or on the word intraspace.

Friday, December 02, 2005

dvd design...

this is a package i did some artwork for. the whole thing was completed this week. it's a dvd/cd set promoting the first single of my mate jamie strange (songwriter).

the dvd contains a music video of the single ('i wonder') shot by roly ebbing and lisa beedham (credits include the rhian sheehan video 'sunshine'). for the video itself, i worked on the concept and then as general dog's body at the shoot.

for the final package, i designed the cover, cd/dvd faces, and dvd menus utilising the target and outline elements designed by renee blair. i also designed the jamie strange logo and the dvd includes some stills photography i did during the video shoot.

so there you go. contact me if you want to get your hands on this dvd plus five track cd package. all for NZ$15.

on the stereo: 'the will to live' by ben harper, from the album 'the will to live'. www.benharper.net

Thursday, December 01, 2005

innovations

i've made a few tweeks on the website - not exactly ground-breaking, but quality-improving nonetheless.

1. i have registered www.safelittleworld.com and it is now an alias for www.andrewkillick.com, so you can type in either and be taken to my website. i like the ring of 'safe little world' and it might be a concept that i can develop further.

2. i have fixed the tab order on my contact form (to make kirk happy). you can now use the tab key to move through the form fields logically.

3. i have seen fit to give credit where credit is due and have included an 'antenna' (the software i used to create the site) logo on my about page. the logo links through to the antenna homepage.

4. i have changed it so that all links now open in a new browser window - so that you can always find your way back home to my page, no matter how many of the links you follow, and how far away you stray. that's comforting isn't it?

5. and lastly, by a stunning feat of programming excellence (thanks to the guys at antenna for their firsthand input), you can now not only click the titles of the poems on the poem page to reveal the poems but also click the title again to hide the poem again. hours of interactive fun there!

next up: i'll post the cover of the dvd/cd set that i've just done artwork stuff on for jamie strange - song-writing extraordinaire.

Saturday, November 26, 2005

nice

i managed to motivate myself to create a page two for my online gallery. glad i did because i think it looks right nice - go have a squizz. it is a bit more coherent than page one, because page one was a bit of a mishmash that i put together quite quickly under the pressure of needing to get the website done in the first place.

also new on the website, as i said before, are a couple real nice new links, so check those out too.

good on you.

on the stereo: 'dirty harry' by the gorillaz, from the album 'demon days'. www.gorillaz.com

nothing happening (much)

sales of the book are still ticking along. in fact this week i started making tentative enquiries about getting a few more copies printed. in publishing there is a fine balancing act that happens when stock starts to get low - you want stock on hand in case of significant orders but you don't want to end up with too many copies. tomorrow the pastor at church has promised to promote the book from the front - so i guess that will lead to more sales... i've sent a couple of review copies to the states too. hopefully if i need more copies i will be able to get them before christmas.

added a couple of fantastic new links to the links page of my website - check them out.

i might add some new images to the gallery too today (maybe). also stand by for a new blog that i have in the pipeline.

ps. have you noticed that that picture of me to the right looks like i have one eyebrow raised a la the rock?

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

business as usual

things have settled down considerably since the craziness of the last two weeks getting everything ready.

an interview with me apparently went to air on rhema today at 3.10. i went to auckland last week and i also had an interview with the challenge weekly newspaper. that will run in the next two weeks.

sales of the book have gone pretty well and i don't have all that many books left. so if you want one you best get on over to www.andrewkillick.com and get ordering.

meanwhile, you can also check out the blog of my poetry colleague mr mark laurent (musician and poet).

on the stereo: 'people in the city' by air, from the album '10,000Hz Legend'. www.intairnet.org

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

big announcements!

it gives me great pleasure to finally be able to announce, after all this time, that 'Epilogue' is now available online at www.andrewkillick.com. which is also my subtle way of saying that the website is up and running as of this evening too. so get there!!!

i reckon everything has turned out pretty cool on the website and there's more on there than just the poetry book, so take a look around.

finally i can have a bit of a rest - it has all been a right mission in some ways. although, on friday i'm heading up to auckland to deliver stock of the books to the distributors and do a radio interview about the book (radio rhema at 4.10pm on friday).

i'll let you know how things go.

on the stereo: 'mr shakes' by sola rosa, from the album 'solarized'. www.solarosa.com

Thursday, November 10, 2005

big progress

the books arrived back from the printers yesterday. they are looking real good. they're sitting in the box here just itching to be released.

so i worked until 1.30am this morning on the website so that everything is ready to go when the books go out next week.

the next time you read a post here everything will be go - books available and website live. stay tuned.

on the headphones: 'if you tolerate this' by the manic street preachers, from the album 'this is my truth tell me yours'. www.manics.co.uk.

ps. full marks to zenith print in new plymouth for their printing work on my book.

Saturday, November 05, 2005

mail scripts....

well, i couldn't quite get the script i mentioned below to work on my site and, after much emailing and online chatting (i must say the guys who wrote the script were excellent), i found a nice little script that was very easy to set up and seems to be pretty spam safe. i got it from here. in the end most of my problems came down to the fact that there are more scripts available for linux servers than windows ones. i'm on a windows one.

but the up-shot of it all is that i now have an email form on the web and ready to receive emails. if you want to email me go
here. or use the link on the right-hand side of this blog.

on the stereo: 'seven nation army' by the white stripes, from the album 'elephant'.
www.whitestripes.com

Friday, November 04, 2005

fun with websites...

progress is being made on all fronts. the book is underway printing i am told, so i should have it next week - these things always end up taking longer.

the company i work for - castle publishing - will be co-distributing the book, which is good for getting it into the bookshops. doing quick maths in my head - i will probably need a reprint quite quickly - possibly even before christmas (i am doing a limited number to make sure i don't end up with boxes in the garage).

i spent five hours working on one image for the frontpage interface of the website a couple of nights ago. looks great and i'm very pleased with it.

then i got diverted trying to work out how to have an email form on the site. got caught up in the intricacies of working with cgi script and stuff. i found a nice little free cgi email script (
here) and am on a crash course on how to get this stuff to work - this is my first experience with it. anyway, i thought i had it all sweet but in testing tonight it wasn't working, so i have emailed a guru to see what i need to do. hopefully nothing too major.

that's the sum. nothing on the headphones tonight because my head is hurting a bit.

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

first fruits of the website

so i'm doing a kind of graphical interface for my website. the frontpage will have a collage scene and clicking on each of the objects will take you to different parts of the site.

this is a picture out of the collage that i drew a couple of nights ago. it will take you to this blog - or maybe the links page. not 100% sure yet, but probably the blog.

the computer is some sort of old 80s 'radio shack' thing. i went hunting for images on the web.

on the headphones: 'superstylin' by groove armada, from the album 'goodbye country'. www.groovearmada.com

proof

today i got a proof of my book in the mail. and i have to say i quite like it. i was pleased because if i saw it in the bookshop i'd buy it.

there were a couple of tweekages needed - i'm getting a heavier stock for the cover (250gsm instead of 200gsm) so that will make it right nice.

the printers are busy and are talking about not having it finished until next week or so. not much to be done about it - but hopefully i'll have it a little earlier than that.

i commenced work on my website... i'll chuck another post up shortly with a little pic off the frontpage that i did a couple of nights ago.

on the headphones: 'i belong to june' by brahm, from the album 'curves'.

Sunday, October 30, 2005

away she goes

it's gone. on friday afternoon i emailed a 15meg pdf of the inside of my book and an 8meg pdf of the cover to the printers.

next step is a bound proof being sent back to me to check before committing to the final print run (one of the luxuries of digital printing).

if you're reading this and you want a copy of the book, it'll be available through my website www.andrewkillick.com. i'll have a paypal system for people outside of new zealand. inside new zealand give me an email (you'll be able to do that through the website too).

next step is to get the website cranking - my next project - happening this week. meanwhile, if you want to email me for pre-ordering the book, contact me on andrew at andrewkillick.com.

i'll keep you updated about when the book is available and about how the website is shaping up.

on the headphones: 'little miss cypher' by pepe deluxe, from the album 'beatitude'. www.pepedeluxe.com

Monday, October 24, 2005

back cover

half-way through labour weekend monday, and the inside pages and back cover are pretty much finished - barring any minor tweekage.

here's the back cover. the inside is looking quite nice indeed - managed to incorporate a concept from an alternate cover design onto the title page, so everyone's a winner.

only thing that remains now is to impose the cover for printing (chuck the front and backcover along with a spine and bleeds - bits where the image goes outside the cropping margins so that when the thing is cropped there is no chance of getting any unprinted stuff along the edge - onto to one page) once i have heard back from the printers about the spine width and what their requirements are for bleeds. i guess that will happen tomorrow... meaning that [slight feeling of nervousness here] the book will be at the printers by wednesday.

on the headphones: 'space shanty' by leftfield, from the album 'leftism'. www.leftfield-online.com

Thursday, October 20, 2005

layout progress

spent a few hours last night working on the inside of the book - exercised my brain so much that i couldn't sleep when i finally went to bed. but the good thing is that i've broken the back of the layout and it's looking nice; it's come together well.

next i will tweek the layout (based on what i've seen in the readers spreads i printed last night), work on the title page and half-title, and put together a graphic that comes at the end of the book.

then i will work on the backcover - probably won't have any words on there apart from the publisher name, my web address, and the barcode. i'm publishing the book under my imprint 'shadow press' - hopefully the first of many art/text books under that name. the backcover will feature a black and white photo of me (oh the ego) taken by my mate luke - who i've known since i was 5. the image was taken on the east coast (nz) during a road trip we did a couple of years ago.

it's labour weekend this weekend and i hope to have the book ready for the printers by the end of it. actually starting to feel quite excited about it. if i can send the book away this coming tuesday it should be ready by november 1.

i'll be working hard on my website when the book is at the printers to get things ready for my giant marketing push...

on the headphones: 'speak low (bent remix)' by billie holiday, from the album 'verve remixed vol 3'. http://www.vervemusicgroup.com/artist.aspx?aid=4558

Saturday, October 15, 2005

the cover is here!

well, here it is finally. i've had a productive couple of hours, working through the text of the book, fine-tuning and getting a feel for the text itself in order to choose the right cover.

this cover was the crowd favourite when i did my 'market research', and although this isn't the one that came together so miraculously at the beginning of the design process, i think it probably fits the overall feel of this book and my poetry in general.

so here's the background on the cover image: i took the photograph in arthurs pass in the south island (nz) during a trip i did with two singaporean and one american photographer, acting as a guide, in 2004. it was a wet misty day, we pulled over to look at bush scenary. the image is of a moss-covered tree with a orange track marker nailed to it. had to open my aperature right up and shoot at about 1/30 sec i think. shot on 200 asa kodak slide film of some description using my pentax P30.

the motif over the title is a kind of mountain silouette. all the elements are very new zealand - moss, tree, mountain. and for some reason whenever i doodle i always end up drawing a tree on a mountain - which is why i went for those elements.

the title font is 'porcelin' - a double stroke script font which i am also using for the poem titles inside the book. the author name is in zurich bt - my body text font for the book.

publication is looking a lot closer now...

on the headphones: 'end of a century' by blur, from 'the best of blur'. www.blur.co.uk

Friday, October 14, 2005

coming soon!

after a lot of decision making, i think i have nearly settled on the cover design. i have to say working on my own book has been much harder than working on someone else's. much more difficult to be objective - impossible to be objective actually.

i had the printers do sample prints of the cover designs and they all came out looking pretty good.

the idea now is to print out a working draft of the book itself and then read through it from start to finish. at the end of that, look at the two cover options, and which ever one fits the feeling of the book better will be it.

so, i hope to have the cover design on here in the next couple of days. i don't make things any easier on myself do i?

on the headphones: 'directions' by broadway project, from the album 'hed kandi - serve chilled 2'.

Thursday, October 06, 2005

about the title

well, i went ahead and designed a couple of alternative designs for the cover and then did some 'market research'. got a wide range of feedback, and as usual with cover designs, nobody had the same idea. i narrowed it down to two designs and have sent files to the printers to have test prints done. i suspect that the final decision will come down to how these print. i'm printing digitally - so i won't get the fine quality prints i might get from offset.

meanwhile, jonathan asked me what the title 'epilogue' was all about, and here's what i said: "an epilogue is something that is written after the fact. poetry based on experience is always that - an epilogue to the actual experience. second, at a practical level i am in a poetry writing hiatus, haven't written anything for ages, so in that sense this book is something of an epilogue - a rounding off of a particular period. from an abstract sort of spiritual point of view - the epilogue is where the action happens - heaven, eternity etc. the title essentially comes from the end of one of the poems in the book that ends: "truth like a perpetual epilogue".

hope to have a cover design up for you soon.

on the headphones as i write this: 'snowflakes (cured by temple of jay mix)' by just jack, from the album 'the outer marker'. download it for free here.

Saturday, October 01, 2005

cover design?

i think i just accidentally designed the cover of my poetry book. i mean, i was trying to design, but through a series of 'accidents' i ended up with something different to my original idea. but it was too easy, so before i get all crazy and post the new cover on the blog, i better go back and check my original ideas to make absolutely sure that this first attempt is in fact as cool as i think it is.

another thing that happened today, too. anna and i decided that 'epilogue' is the best title of the book. she liked the sound of that better than 'transit'. when i came to typeset the words 'transit' and 'epilogue' i found that epilogue looks a hang of a lot better in type - especially the script types i am playing with. epilogue has two descenders - 'p' and 'g' and one ascender - 'l', which help with the forward movement of the script. you'll see what i mean when i post the cover.

anyway - good progress being made. stand by.

on the stereo as i write: 'burn out' by the cinematic orchestra, from the album 'every day'. www.cinematicorchestra.com

Friday, September 30, 2005

welcome to the new blog

this is my first foray into the world of blogging. wow, isn't that exciting?

i'm currently working on my first proper book after five years of working on other people's books. it's a collection of poetry - about 64 pages long, with a working title of either 'transit' or 'epilogue'.

selecting the poems has been surprisingly difficult as has deciding on the order. i think i have that roughly right now and am working on the design. i spent a few hours over the last couple of nights scanning slides of potential images for the front cover.

i hope to have the book ready in about two weeks, but will leave regular up-dates here about what's happening. once that is more or less ready i will be full-steam-ahead on working on my website www.andrewkillick.com. you can check it out now, but there's only a splash page.

feel free to post comments / questions etc.

on my headphones as i write: 'revolution solution' by the theivery corporation, from the album 'the cosmic game'. www.thieverycorporation.com