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What a Mess! A Pop-Up Misadventure

09/06/2016
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What a Mess! A Pop-Up Misadventure is a bright and colorful pop-up book filled with complex paper engineering and lots of details. The stunning artwork and colorful patterns make every page a delight to look at and the variety of different pop-up techniques is impressive!

What a Mess! tells us the story of a brother and sister who can’t keep their mess under control and eventually find themselves on a misadventure that they will not soon forget. The story starts with a closet, packed full with toys, that explodes. An adventure unfolds with a toy mountain that rapidly grows, funky smelling stuff and a real dust-nado must also be survived. Will they ever get their mess cleaned up? The rhyming form of storytelling makes it fun to read. The inspiration for What a Mess! pop-up book came from Keith’s two children and their ever-growing mess.


This pop-up book is well made and shows some very effective paper animation like a rotating swirl, flipping doors and an explosion of toys. Every pop-up in this book pops-in and out very solid and is very detailed. Combined with the artwork, you’ll see a strong effect of depth on every page that makes it fun to look at the pop-ups from multiple angles.

About the author

Keith Allen is an illustrator, designer and paper engineer who lives in Cleveland, Ohio with his wife and children. He lives a busy life, working as a product designer at American Greetings, and works on his personal projects at night. Keith comes from a creative family and got into the self-publishing world a couple of years ago with the launch of a wonderful pop-up book called A Day in Rehoboth Beach. Keith, his grandmother Joanne DeFiore and his brother Brian Allen created this pop-up book about their favorite summer destination Rehoboth Beach.

We’ve asked Keith Allen some questions about his project What a Mess!. Continue to the interview…

Keith Allen sent us a unique and signed copy of the What a Mess! pop-up book. During the process of designing and creating this pop-up book, Keith has assembled three hand-made prototype books and the one showing in our video review and photo gallery is the very first copy he made.

What-a-mess-pop-up-spread-1-v2

More adventurous pop-up books


What a Mess! A Pop-Up Misadventure is a bright and colorful pop-up book filled with complex paper engineering and lots of details. The stunning artwork and colorful patterns make every page a delight to look at and the variety of different pop-up techniques is impressive! What a Mess! tells us the story of a brother and sister who can't keep their mess under control and eventually find themselves on a misadventure that they will not soon forget. The story starts with a closet, packed full with toys, that explodes. An adventure unfolds with a toy mountain that rapidly grows, funky smelling stuff and a real dust-nado must also be survived. Will they ever get their mess cleaned up? The rhyming form of storytelling makes it fun to read. The inspiration for What a Mess! pop-up book came from Keith's two children and their ever-growing mess.

This pop-up book is well made and shows some very effective paper animation like a rotating swirl, flipping doors and an explosion of toys. Every pop-up in this book pops-in and out very solid and is very detailed. Combined with the artwork, you'll see a strong effect of depth on every page that makes it fun to look at the pop-ups from multiple angles. About the author Keith Allen is an illustrator, designer and paper engineer who lives in Cleveland, Ohio with his wife and children. He lives a busy life, working as a product designer at American Greetings, and works on his personal projects at night. Keith comes from a creative family and got into the self-publishing world a couple of years ago with the launch of a wonderful pop-up book called A Day in Rehoboth Beach. Keith, his grandmother Joanne DeFiore and his brother Brian Allen created this pop-up book about their favorite summer destination Rehoboth Beach. We've asked Keith Allen some questions about his project What a Mess!. Continue to the interview... Keith Allen sent us a unique and signed copy of the What a Mess! pop-up book. During the process of designing and creating this pop-up book, Keith has assembled three hand-made prototype books and the one showing in our video review and photo gallery is the very first copy he made.

More adventurous pop-up books

8.2

Wonderful

Our review

This pop-up book is a perfect mix of chaos and beautiful artwork combined with great paper engineering.

Easy pop-in pop out
Artwork
Number of pop-ups
Used techniques
Story telling
Wow! factor
8

Keith Allen is a designer, illustrator and paper engineer who lives in Cleveland, Ohio with his lovely wife and children. Keith lives a busy life working as a designer at American Greetings.

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