Traditional Art

Without question, the most beautiful pieces of artwork throughout the world have come from traditional media. Find a slab of bark, some crushed berries and some horsehair. That’s all you need to go anywhere and paint anything. The simplicity of it is artistic in itself.



*The first painting, "The Torn Hat" is a reproduction of Thomas Sully's original.

Graphic Design

I like this part. This is the area where I get to build something with the tools I've acquired. Here are a few examples:

Children's Book Design

My experience in children's book design encompasses more than just text layout. Logo design, illustration, color, pop-up's, board game design, templates, etc. If you wish to know more about my skills in this department, contact me. I'd also like to give credit to Mike Boldt, Michelle McBride, Mandy L Paproski and Michael Csokas for their illustration work on these covers.











Logo's

Logo's are a very exciting part of design. It can be extremely enjoyable because you can explore so many creative avenues and see results in a short amount of time. Here are just a few:




Commercial Design



Web Design

Creating websites is the ultimate way to incorporate design and interactivity with the greatest return. Gather important information about your consumers, provide unlimited comprehensive information to your customers/clients, generate online sales
and the list goes on. Here is one example of my work, this being a Macromedia Flash website.

http://www.survivalonsnow.com

Paper Engineering

In my time with Transglobal Communications, I learned a lot about in-house publishing and what it takes to make a quality product before it goes to a potential buyer. Here I was relied upon to make sure the quality of the mock-up’s produced were of the highest grade. If there was a special feature to the book which required special measurements, folds, add-on's, plastic parts, moving parts... it would often be my job to create the pilot product. Pilot products are sent to potential buyers or clients therefor they need to be of factory quality.
We produced a wide variety of different pop-up products. From simple single-layer pop-ups all the way to multi-layer, multi-piece advanced pop-ups. In this area I have been relied upon to be innovative in creating the most dynamic, cost efficient paper engineering products. Everything from kids books to gift bags, product packaging and other marketing material, they've all seen a pop-up or two.

Writing

Cool comes the mountain mist,
To me without a sound,
Gently passing the sleepy trees,
Softly slithering down.

Bringing with her whispers
Of ten thousand year old souls,
All with heralding stories to tell
To be heard by the young and the old.

Am I the pen and the ink in the hands
Of those wise and ancient voices?
Asked to revive the ashes of old
Adding fuel to the fire of our choices.

At times we can all be story tellers or poets in our own way. I enjoy using the written word to inspire conversation, creativity in young hearts and minds, visual art and music.

Within the children's book industry I have a number of published works which have featured my stories as well as the illustrations. I currently have a number of stories nearly ready for production in genre's including children's, young adult as well as for adults. For more information on these, please contact me.

In addition, I found a niche at Transglobal for writing the small bio's, catch phrases and marketing scripts which get printed on the back of their books. Maybe it's just that I have a knack for stating the obvious... hmmm.

Audio Engineering

I would tell you that my first love in the universe is the creation of music.
I also have experience making full children’s audio/visual books, including narration, character voices, musical scores, sound effects and final production.

Children's Music

Here's a few children's songs which have been distributed with a variety of read along Children's book CD's and DVD's from Transglobal Communications Group, Inc.

Here is my music profile on MyJonesMusic.com


Other Audio Engineering

In addition to making music, I have had a passion for movie production. Along with that comes soundtracks, mood music, sound effects... the list goes on. I've dabbled in a number of things which fit in to this category, including a project at Transglobal where I fully produced a narrative Read-a-long CD/w books package. Children's Narratives are only available upon request. Send requests to jmdirks@gmail.com