Magazine Covers

Over the weekend I needed to do a preWWI Magazine cover. I really just needed an image, since it's a made up magazine, but I searched covers in attempts of narrowing it down. Magazines are something I find I quite commonly need to do for "business" hand props. So normally you can just pull a period front cover and a random period ad and size it to fit over a current magazine or fill with Ledger size paper folded in half.
I found a TON of good resources, some which I've used in the past. I did quite a bit of searching through most of these, so I hopefully will be able to tell you what's there.

I did a lot of searching through this link in hopes of finding something. Other than being a pain in the ass to just browse through, it's pretty great. There is a large range of years and various magazine covers. The image sizes are fairly big. I couldn't find a "main page" that had the list of links for each section like the bottom of the page has, so it's linked to the 1917 page.

This flickr page didn't have quite what I wanted. I think it's mostly stuff from the teens and twenties. I believe it's all cover art by a specific artist. There are 340 photos (as of today), so it's worth taking a look at when you're searching. The nice thing is that you can hover over the thumbnails and see captions that tell you the magazine title and publishing year.

The next link is to a blog entry. There are only about 40 covers here according to the blog, but they have a good range in types of magazines and years (1913-1988). If you are looking for some sweet covers, I recommend looking here.

I found the cover I used at MagazineArt.org. It has a nice large collection. My only issue with it was that I couldn't look by year, only by title. The nice part with the search is that you can narrow it down by category then title. It's also nice because you can scroll through each title if there are multiple images available and you want to view all the large images. It also has ads available, which is handy for making back covers.

I used Whodatedwho.com last summer when I needed gossip mags for South Pacific. If I remember correctly, the images are a little small and will pixelate a tad when you blow it up to magazine size, but it's nothing that is noticeable off stage. There are a great amount of movie and gossip magazines available. You can search by year and page through the years. It will also give you the option to narrow down by magazine title within a year. I haven't looked at this site for much else, but it seems that you may also be able to get movie posters on here dating back to 1913. Oh, one last thing, the earliest link date is 1930 for the magazines, but there are some available further back than that. Just click on 1930 and page back.

Finally, if you want vintage Good Housekeeping covers, there are some available on the website. I haven't looked at it much more than seeing that it was there. I just saw the link when I was searching and thought it would be a good one to bookmark.

I'll add these links to the sidebar in a bit. Right now I need to get back to work. I'll work on getting some more links up tomorrow before I get off for another long weekend.

Newspaper Archive

Today's link is a pay site. If you've ever made a period newspaper on photoshop from scratch, you know how much of a pain it is to make a good one. Trust me when I say, it is worth what ever you pay for a month long membership. Just make sure you take advantage of it and download as much as you can in that month. (This advice came from the APT props master, who happens to just get a membership when he needs it and downloads all he can.)
Anyway, you can search a ton of different newspapers from the US and select countries dating back to the 1700s. I wasn't the one to do the image pulling for the newspaper we made this year, so I haven't had really any interaction with the site. It seems easy enough to navigate. I'm pretty sure, much like the British Museum Archives, you get a decent amount of info as to the size of the paper and the number of pages each issue should be.
The best part is that the downloads come in PDF files of each page. So you can download single pages if you just need to create filler and mix and match different dates. For example, we used an Alabama paper called The Southern Immigrant for Another Part of the Forest. It's only a 4 page paper, but we needed an 8 page one, so 4 pages were pulled from other dates.
If possible, print the papers double sided on a large scale printer. SO much better than piecing together, even though loading is a pain. Granted, unless you happen to get newsprint big enough to do 2 pages on 1 sheet like a real paper, you'll have to tape together the 2 sides.
So there you go- NewspaperArchive.com. Check it out. You won't be able to take a good look unless you subscribe, but you can get a feel for the site by looking.

British Museum Online Archive

Today, after spending all afternoon working on paper props, I realized I need something to help me keep track of great websites and online sources for props that I can access from anywhere. I lose USB drives easily and I don't think a running list on Word is the best way to keep track anyway. Then it hit me- keep a blog. So here's a blog to help me keep track of great sites I come across. Of course, it is for anyone else interested to use as well. Feel free to comment on your experience with the sources I feature, suggest other sites, or just browse.

Today's source is the Online Archive for the British Museum. I discovered it the way you discover all good sources- really randomly through some source link on Wikipedia.
I needed to find Late 19th/ Early 20th century checks for Major Barbara. First off, searching for that on Google, not the best plan. I was about to give up when I decided to take a look on Wikipedia, which made me realize that I should use the British spelling- cheque. I found a little PDF link all about cheques in the references part of the article. The PDF had many different images credited to various sources. Most were from Bank Archives, which led me no where in quick sources because you have to contact the archive and request material. Then I finally looked at the British Museum and stumbled across the fact that they have an amazing online archive.

So here's the deal- you can let the website give you all the stats on how many things are available, but you can search the database with keywords and narrow it down to a certain period and images only. I know, not a big deal- THIS is what makes it awesome. When you find images you like, you can't just save the image, but you can ORDER the image from the archive for FREE. What makes it so awesome, you ask? WELL, after you register saying that you are requesting the images for non-commercial use, you can download up to 100 images per month. The images have to be emailed to you and it claims that you will get them within 2 business days, but they are HIGH QUALITY images, so it's worth the wait if you have the time. I requested 11 images today between 3 & 4 and had them in my inbox by 8.

As far as searching goes, since I only discovered this source today, I haven't done much. It was fantastic for images only, "cheque" dated between 1890 and 1910. I got 63 hits and all but 3 or 4 where actually cheques. I also tried telegrams for the same dates and got nothing. So I guess it just depends on what you are researching. Definitely will be using it more in the future.

One final thing to praise on this site and then I'm calling it a night. Each hit has a great amount of info to go with the image. It's easiest just to show you, so here's a link to one of the cheques I requested today.

I was really excited about this source, I hope others are too. I don't want to break the terms of agreement for the images, so I'll just be holding on to the ones I have and let you request your own. I've acquired a few great source links on my work computer, so hopefully it will be slow enough tomorrow or Friday that I can post a few more links.