Uncategorized

I am an Illustrator – How will this platform help me?

Pratham Books is a finalist in the Google Impact Challenge. Our idea is to create an open source platform for children’s books. We need all our readers and supporters to VOTE FOR OUR PROJECT IDEA so that we can win this grant and make this dream a reality.

Our project will build collaborative web platforms that solve the three major problems that affect children in India – a very low number of books available for them, a lack of linguistic diversity of books and a lack of access to funding for libraries and books so that children can experience the joy of reading.

The ‘I am …’ series  written by Mala Kumar will give you an insight into how this platform can be useful to you – as an author, an illustrator, a storyteller, a publisher, etc. Today’s post is from the viewpoint of an illustrator.
I am an Illustrator – How will this platform help me? 

The open source platform allows one to showcase one’s work to a immensely larger audience than a traditional print-publisher driven readership. An illustrator’s work becomes available to many millions of readers and also gets an extended life through more derivative works, made possible because it is on an open platform. Imagine your work on apps, mobiles, iPads, merchandise, other new and as-yet unknown mediums! Instead of being locked in a physical book, read by a smaller number of children, or sitting idle in book shops and libraries, the illustrations would fly out and become accessible to a a vast number of children, educators, librarians, parents, and others, who can use them to spread the joy of illustrated stories. The copyright for the work always lies with the illustrator, even if it is is used in other derivative works. Some illustrators distrust open source platforms since they feel their work would be ‘stolen’. While this may happen, the other guaranteed result – of being noticed and solicited – far outweighs this. Other publishers will also be able to see your work on this platform, making it a huge marketing tool for your work. Illustrators can look forward to exciting collaboration projects from a worldwide community. As an illustrator, you will also have access to all our openly licensed content, for inspiration and deliberation on different illustration styles.
The posts we are sharing about the project will help you understand our vision as well as the scope of this project. Related posts:
2. Let a Thousand Tongues Speak – Increasing language diversity in children’s books
You can also spread the word by :
4. Writing a post on your blog about why you believe in our mission and why you want readers to vote for us. Here’s an example from one of our champions.
Illustration courtesy : A collaborative effort of children who participated in a workshop that resulted in the creation of the book ‘The Seventh Sun
Tags:

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

DISCLAIMER :Everything here is the personal opinions of the authors and is not read or approved by pratham books before it is posted. No warranties or other guarantees will be offered as to the quality of the opinions or anything else offered here