Hello Minnelli

April 16, 2009 3:01 PM

How can I make a poster out of a coloring book page?

So I've got a picture that I very much want to have on my wall, because clearly I have no taste. What I have is very simple, thick line art on crappy coloring book paper, at about 24x18 inches. What I want is a pretty, colorful poster using the original line art, suitable for framing and for making my house that much more tacky. How do I get from point A to point B?

Here are the obstacles I know about:

• I never learned to color between the lines, so I would need someone to produce a color image for me, and I don't know anyone with that skillset.
• It's a copyrighted image, and although this would be strictly for my personal use, that might make whoever I'm working with balk. That includes either whoever turns the line art into the image or the shop that prints the print.
• It would be neat, though not strictly necessary, to add embellishment around it--background, borders, whatever. Ideally, I think I'd want to end up with something any Red Robin would be eager to have on its walls. I don't know how to find an artist who could do such things.
• Even if I were to enlist an actual artist, I'm half convinced that they'd be insulted at what I was asking for.
• I have no idea what getting a poster or print or whatever created entails, even if I had a finished image to work with.

Here's a variant (in hideous colors) of the image I'm after, just so you understand how refined a sense of artistic merit I have.

Can someone with experience in these kinds of things help get me started?

posted by darksasami to media & arts (14 comments total)

You need to find someone who can (and is willing) to scan your coloring book page and convert it to vector line art in Adobe Illustrator (or similar software). At that point they can color it and generate a printable file as large as you would like. It's something many graphic designers (or, for that matter, traditional--drawn 2D-- animators) should be able to do for you. Whether they'd be willing and how much they'd charge is a whole 'nother thing.
posted by dersins at 3:12 PM on April 16

A few thoughts:

1. Post an ad on Craigslist that you need someone with a scanner, Adobe Illustrator, and experience to scan and clean-up an image for you. $15 - $20/hr seems reasonable, with some a of cap of either 2 or 3 hours. Adjust this pay scale as dictated by your budget. Also, be sure to specify that you want the resolution of the finished image suitable for printing in reasonably high def at your stated size, 24" X 18".

2. Kinkos (and I'm sure lots of other places) will enlarge any digitized image to poster size on reasonably thick, glossy, photo-grade poster paper. We did this recently for our son's birthday party, and it was $45 for a really nice, full color image that was 24" X 36". The same image in B&W would have been ~$5. I imagine that a full color image half the size of the one we had made would be $25 - $30.
posted by mosk at 3:21 PM on April 16 [1 favorite]

FWIW, looking at what kind of thing you want, it wouldn't be too hard. You could do this yourself probably quite easily, even in your basic paint program. Just find some way of scanning in the picture (you could probably do this at the library or at Staples or something, if you don't have any other access to a flatbed scanner).

So long as you save a copy or two of the original, you could just experiment with fills (even gradient fills!), paint brushes and whatnot. If you find a border you like online, copy and paste it in, move the border around into the right position and overlap them, learn to use the eraser (and how to 'undo').

Would probably be really fun to try and you'd have something you created yourself. Just try to save it as a big enough picture that you can go get it printed out somewhere.
posted by lizbunny at 3:27 PM on April 16

lizbunny, that probably wouldn't work for a few reasons

-anything drawn in a non-vector program is going to look like shit when blown up
-drawing on the computer is a bitch unless you have one of those fancy pen-mouse thingies (which are a bit cost-prohibitive for this application)

Mosk is on troack, but the problem you're going to run into when printing is that it's a copyrighted image, even though you are not trying to make money off it. You might be able to slide by once it's scanned/traced (legally it's the same thing, but you could probably convince the hourly-paid drones at Kinko's!).
posted by radioamy at 4:39 PM on April 16

oh and btw I think it's an adorable poster. Hello Kitty is always in style!
posted by radioamy at 4:39 PM on April 16

If you wanted something done by hand, which I bet would you cool, you could commision an artist to resize and colour it onto a canvas. You could submit a proposal to Etsy Alchemy and see what comes up.
posted by stray at 4:48 PM on April 16

> but the problem you're going to run into when printing is that it's a copyrighted image

Legally, sure, this is a copyright violation, but realistically, I don't think the OP will have any issues. As I mentioned, we had a poster blown up at Kinko's for our son's birthday party. What I didn't mention was that the was a poster of a Star Wars: The Clone Wars character, which we used to play "Pin the light saber Asajj Ventress". The image choice elicited absolutely no response from the Kinko's employee. Honestly, I think this person would have re-printed anything that wasn't U.S. currency. YMMV, obviously, but for a one-off, I don't think copyright is going to be an issue with a place like Kinko's.
posted by mosk at 5:04 PM on April 16

radioamy: Mosk is on troack, but the problem you're going to run into when printing is that it's a copyrighted image, even though you are not trying to make money off it. You might be able to slide by once it's scanned/traced (legally it's the same thing, but you could probably convince the hourly-paid drones at Kinko's!).

I have a very, very hard time seeing how this doesn't fall under 'fair use.' Yes, copyright means a control over the copying of an image or work; but the courts (both nationally and internationally) have recognized limits to this control. Fair use is notoriously flexible and ambiguous, but I can't imagine any judge calling this infringement.

Moreover, the image being produced is not a whole-cloth copy of the original. It is a colored-in version of the original. One could even argue easily that a book meant for others to use in creating works of art already precludes claims of 'copyright infringement.'

I'm only saying, darksasami, that you needn't worry about this being against the law.
posted by koeselitz at 5:19 PM on April 16

In other words, I don't think this is a copyright violation at all.
posted by koeselitz at 5:20 PM on April 16

Also, this is easier than people are making it out to be. Here's what you should do:

(1) Go to Kinko's. Bring your coloring-book page. Ask if they have a scanner. If they don't, they will know of a Kinko's that does; in my experience, most of them do.

(2) Tell them you want to scan that page. If you need help, ask for it; that's what they're there for. Scan it in at the maximum resolution; if you can't figure out how to do that, tell them to show you.

(3) Save the image.

(4) Open Paint: click on the 'start' button. Select Programs -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Paint. It might be a little different. If that doesn't work, press and hold the Windows key and touch the 'r' key, then release both; when the little 'run' window appears, type 'MSPaint' and press enter. When you've opened Paint, open the image you just saved.

(5) Click on the little picture of a paint bucket tilting. Then, click on the color you want in a particular area, and then, with your little paint bucket, click on that white area you want to fill with the color. Repeat as necessary. Save the image.

(6) Call over the Kinko's guy and say: 'There! I want this printed out, poster-size! Do you think that will work?' He will help you and do the printing for you.

(7) You're done. Total cost: probably about $30.
posted by koeselitz at 5:29 PM on April 16

The other option; maybe a little better. ;)

(*) Scan the image, and then email it to me. I'll make it look however you want it to look for free.

or

(*) If you're not opposed to waiting a week or two, mail the sheet to me, and I'll scan it, color it per your instructions, and send you a poster as big as you like. [My address is in my profile.]
posted by koeselitz at 5:31 PM on April 16

Hey, don't forget here...paper, especially COLORING BOOK cheapo paper, looks really really neat when it's blown up to huge size. And you can color over it and keep the cool papery effect afterward, really. It would look even better. When I make cards and stuff, I have my little designs, and then I digitally slap a big old papery texture on 'em, because I love it so much.
posted by redsparkler at 8:45 PM on April 16

Hey, thanks for all the suggestions! I think I probably should have made it clearer that the original is gigantic (not as big as I thought though--13.5" x 19.5"), which will make scanning lots of fun, but should facilitate making an image any size I could want. (I could totally have someone color it with crayons and then put it up if that's what I wanted; it just happens that it isn't.)

Personally, I'm not concerned about "oh no I'm breaking the law" if I were to reproduce it for my own use; I'm fairly sure I wouldn't be, and wouldn't care too hard if I were. I'm just concerned about other people not helping me out because of it.

Koeselitz, thanks for the offer, but I've played with image programs and bucket fills in the past, and have come to the conclusion that It's Not That Simple. I think that getting someone to make a vector image of it would be best. Then they could do neat things with backgrounds and layers and all that good stuff.
posted by darksasami at 11:53 PM on April 16

Hey y'all, I just wanted to make a comment about the copyright issues. It doesn't matter if it's fair use or a derivative image or whatever. What matters is what the copy-shop employee thinks he could get fired for.

I was in Kinko's once and a lady was trying to get some Disney Princess thing she made copied for her daughter's birthday invitations. They wouldn't do it because it violated their posted rules about copyrighted images.
posted by radioamy at 10:15 AM on April 18