RESINABLE 

Art Direction: Nathan Young

It’s a tad funny how the idea for this project came about. In a discussion about what I had been doing over semester break, I mentioned my newest hobby, resin-casting. Somebody happened to ask “How exactly does you get into something like that?”. And thus, the idea was born. Resin-casting is a fairly accessible activity, probably more so than one would think. I thought it would be fun to utilize my illustration background by drawing and instructional book for beginners. 

The photos used for the front cover, back cover, and spine are of actual letter cast in resin by yours truly on top of the placemat that I personally use for casting; so all the gunk, residue, and popsicle sticks are legit. The other elements were sketched by hand and scanned, with some minor alterations in photoshop. The endpages are a scan of an abstract painting using alcohol inks; a common material used for dying resin. The contents of the nook was written by me and the inner illustrations were sketched, scanned, and slightly altered digitally. Most of the instructional booklets and tutorials you would find online give you a ton of information, but can be extremely dull. The goal was to create something that gives you all the necessary info while also containing some tips and tricks form someone who messed up a whole bunch in order to figure out the correct way to do things. The term ‘controlled chaos’ comes to mind when I think about the feeling I wanted with the layout; almost as if I had the type printed and hten I grabbed a pen and some markers and went to town filling out the negative space with instructional information. There is a bit of colorful language sprinkled throughout (hence the multiple warnings on the cover) but it was done in good fun. I wanted it to feel as if I’m right there talking you through everything. Just me, completely unfiltered, giving you a rundown of the way things are supposed go. 

Here is a quick animation that flips thtough all of the pages of the book.

The ‘Behind The Scenes’ Process:

The Sketches