Graphic Narrative Evaluation

Use this template to help you evaluate your project.

You should give specific details about your work.

You should provide both written and visual examples to explain your project.

You should find areas to praise in your work. Be specific about why you think they are good or why you are proud of them.

You should also find areas that could be improved. Look for areas that you could make better if you went back to them. Be specific about what you would improve.

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Does your final product reflect your original intentions?

When it came to my planning I came across a European folk tale called the secret, this is the story I chose to base my children's book around. There are certain aspects about the story that I felt were not appropriate for a children's book and also parts I changed to make more child friendly and relatable. All the characters are are talking animals instead of humans and instead of having no specific setting I sweet it in Africa, this gave me the whole theme of a safari and safari animals and in turn gave me an overall style. In the original folk tale instead of finding two pots of gold he finds a flower instead as I thought a flower was more of a suitable and childlike thing to have. Also instead of the main character wanting to keep the gold he wants to give the flower to his wife to show his love. I felt this was a better plot point to have than the greed of the main character. The rumour that’s one of the main plot points of the story is “The King has a tortoise in his belly”. I thought this was too weird and too much like an old folk tale and not really the best thing for a child as they would get confused and become less interested in the story so I changed it to “The `King paints on his spots” I though that this would be easier to understand and children would like it and get it as the kings character is a giraffe. This would help incorporate the characters more and make it seem like the story was based around the characters not the other way around. I kept the moral of the story the same as it fitted well with the overall narrative of the main character despite them being animals. My flat plans remained pretty much unchanged, the only thing I did was add much more to the frames than what's in the flat plans making the scene more complicated. I even tried to keep the hills in the background the same shape and composition in comparison to the characters. Other things I changed are things like making the sun move across the page during the course of the book and adding pattern overlays that I could not draw on flat plans.

How well have you constructed your images?

First I made the sky, I make a selection using the polygonal lasso tool to select where I wanted the sky to be, I then used the refine edges tool and moved up the sliders that said ‘smooth’ and ‘contrast’ this made it look like my selection was less boxy and more natural. I then selected a photo of the sky that had the appropriate amount of clouds and colour. I wanted to pick one that was orange instead of blue to give more of an impression of an African savannah. I added a ‘cutaway’ filter altered the sliders until it was the style of sky I want, I then altered the Hue/Saturation to achieve the orange sunset tones that I wanted. To create the hills I used the same tools I used to create the sky except I added more points to the line to create a curve then used the refine edges tool to make it more of a smooth curve so it looked more like a hill. After making three to four hills I added different colour overlays to each one each having a colour shade I thought added to the theme of Africa and the desert. Usually beige/orange shades and green shades. I made the hills that were going more into the distance lighter to give an impression of depth to my frames. I then found a series of photos of desert ground, grass, shrubbery and other African style terrains and again added a cutaway effect to them I make sure these effect only had about 4 levels of colour so they appeared more simple than the sky, I also alters the fidelity of the edges to make the edges more smooth and sharp rather than super complicated patches of colour. With these finished terrains I placed each terrain above the hill I wanted the terrain to be on and applied a clipping mask to the hill so each specific terrain covered each hill. After doing this and positioning the images where I wanted then I used the transform warp tool to bend and alter the images along with the shape of the hill in order to make them followed the edges on the hills and look like the flat terrain photos were actually hill shaped not flat. Once the altered photos were overlaid and warped I then turned the opacity down to bring out the original colour of the hill and to make the overlay more subtle and real looking.

When making the sun a messed around with many different patterns till I found one I liked then drew an orange circle by holding shift to constrain it. I then added an outer glow to make it seem more like a sun then overlaid to paisley design and turned down the opacity. The sun is actually two circles on top of each other both with different outer glow effects, this helps it look more like a sun rather than just a sharp circle in the sky. From my first page to my last page I moved the sun each time so if you flip through the pages the sun actually moves across the page, this adds a level of interactivity, things like this combined with the many things it the background gives the book more of a reread quality to it.

Page 1……………………..Page 2

When making the characters I make a separate Photoshop file then dragged them over when I had finished, with the two Wildebeest characters I had the make them as a side view so what I did first was make the face of my character using many shapes and warping them based on what I thought a wildebeests head would look like. Once I had the head shapes arranged how I wanted them I merged all the shape layers and added a brown colour overlay to my whole shape. Once I had the main head shape it was then easier to add features like the horn and the eyes, nose and ears etc. I designed each part separately on the same paged then altered it to fit the same colour and style I wanted for my characters, I paid special attention to the eyes of my characters and made sure they were suitable to be used on every character, by adding the same eyes to each character it makes them look like they are all from the same narrative and hat they all belong together. When I had made the head and face u put them together in a layer group to keep them all together and proceeded to make the body of the animal, with my main characters like the two wildebeests and the king giraffe I had the give them a side view as if they were walking but with my secondary characters like the elephant and the lion I made front facing looking at you. This helped distinguish the main characters that walk about the page and the secondary characters that pop up once. Once I had my character bodies and faces I felt something was missing so I took a bunch of the right fur and animal texture from the internet and added a cut away filter to them. I then overlaid the right textures with the fight parts of the animal and rotated and warped them so the direction of the fur looked realistic and added depth and texture to the characters while keeping things like the eyes and mouths intact so the features stood out against the texture of the faces. By having my characters designed more simple helps them stand out from the more complicated background and stand out as well as looking like actual character that children can enjoy looking at with out them being too scary/real and having the right amount of cartoon quality. After I had designed the characters and fished them in all their positions I added them in their specific positions on the page shrinking them and enlarging in comparison to where they are on the page, the characters that were on a hill behind the other hills smaller and the once closest to the bottom of the page I made bigger. This helped to add depth and give the impression they can walk around and makes the image look less flat. I also added silhouettes of different African trees and shrubs into the background on the horizon, this helps fill the page more and gives the ready more to look at. It also adds the the whole Africa theme. I also added some elephants to the background walking in the horizon then the next time we see that same background it the book the elephants have walker further across the page. I added multiple little things to the background to help develop my setting more and make it seem like they're not the only ones in the savannah. I added things like monkeys and goats to certain trees and added a Jeep in one scene which is the only sign of humans in the whole book.

How well have you used text to anchor your imagesWith my text pages I wanted a recurring theme but something that could be slightly altered each time. I wanted it to be a simple overall design as not to take away focus from the text that is overlaid. I chose the same paisley pattern I used on the sun but I blew it up so it took up the whole page, I added an brown colour overlay to the pattern that was a PNG and then draw a beige box over the whole page and took down the opacity of the pattern, this created a nice subtle backdrop for my text. I still felt something as missing so I added a African style tree in the bottom corner of the page but it looked out of place. I liked the idea of things going on around the text though so I added a small strip of ground the the bottom with the polygonal lasso tool so it looked the the tree actually had a home. I them came up with the idea to add animals and have them walking in a line, I chose the silhouettes of many animals that were specifically in my book with the exception of the goat in the tree. Some of the animal silhouette PNGs I chose weren't as sharp as other so I selected the lower quality ones with the quick selection tool then used the refine edges sliders the make the edges more sharp better quality. I added the same colour overlay to each of the animals as well as the ground and tree to make the whole image look like its own silhouette. As each page went on I moved the animals along the horizon again creating an animation effect that adds a little extra depth and life to the book. I kept the page this simple as not to over complicate the page and take away from the main part which is the text. With the text itself I used the font ‘PT Serif’ I chose a serif font as it ’s the most popular with children's book and is the easiest for younger audiences to read. I added the same colour overlay as the characters in the bottom of the page to make it seem like they all fit together well.

When selecting what parts of text to split into which pages I tried to keep each plot point as it own page. I also tried my best to make sure the last sentence of the text tied in well to the image it was describing.

He walked back up to his farmhouse and told his wife “Did you hear? King Jerry paints on his spots!” “Wow really?” she replied. “Yes, but don’t tell anyone! Keep it a secret,” he said. “Don’t worry I won’t” replied Wendy.

After a few days one of the servants had heard the rumor from Larry, who had in turn heard it from Gary, who had heard it from Ellie, who had heard it from Wendy. Finding out it was Woody who had spread the rumor he had his servants bring Woody to him.

He had never seen a flower so beautiful and colorful living in the hot and dusty savannah. He thought to himself, “I wonder what I could do with it?” Then he came to the idea that he would give it to Wendy, his lovely wildebeest wife to show her just how much he loved her.

When making my flat plans I tried my best to condense the eight plot points each into their own personal graphic that summed up well the point I was trying to get across. There were sometimes when I had to move the last sentence of a paragraph and move it to the next as it didn’t fit as well with the page art and by moving it to the next one it makes the paragraph tie in more with what written down.

Is your product suitable for your audience?

My Proposal said “I will be targeting an audience that is young but not so young that they cannot read for themselves and are maybe just learning to read and talk. I will use bright colours as to keep younger children visually entertained as well as providing lovable characters. It can be read to a child by their parents but also read by older children themselves. Also children that are into and fond of animals and like to think about traveling and the world around them. Girls and Boys and mainly ages from 1-7 yrs.”

I feel the text pages have just the right amount of text that they can be both read by an older or more intelligent child as well as the parent reading the book to a younger child. I made the text font size 24 to give the the best possible readable quality to the page without making it too big and tacky. It’s a good font size and amount for those children you are maybe just starting out or learning to read. I feel as though this would a good book to learn with sure to this reason as well as the use of odd words in to book which aren't too hard to read but still widen their vocabulary. The colour scheme of my book uses very simple and primary colours while also fitting with the colour scheme of the African savannah. I used lots of subtle shades of the same colours ranging from reds, oranges, and beiges for the skies and deserts as well as blues and greens for the shrubbery and water. I feel as though these colours are easy to distinguish from each other and provide a easy to view colour scheme that isn't too in your face and provides a nice calm setting for the characters as well as the children reading. When making the characters I was sure to try make them as simple as possible and I paid special attention to the faces and tried to make them as friendly as possible. I used the same set of eyes for each of the characters and this I feel was the main thing that made them all look like part of the same book. I used less levels of colour with my animals and added simple textures so they would be easy to look at. I gave them mostly blank expressions so the children could project the feelings they want onto each character. I tried my best to make each character lovable and to give each character a reason to be liked e.g. even though the the giraffe’s character is hurt and he want to banish woody he instead has mercy and forgives woody and teaches him to share. This is a likable quality even though he's the main antagonist of the story. I also changed things like the two pots of gold he is is supposed to find in his field, I instead made it a flower that he wanted to give to his wife; this makes my main character more lovable. Another technique I used to keep the readers interested was packing my frames full of fun small things in the background, this add depth as well as making my graphic pages much more rich and entertaining to look at as well as being more stimulating for the readers. the narrative content as well as the visual content is all completely appropriate for my target audience and I feel I have made the story as suited as I can the the audience I want.

What do you like/dislike about the techniques you have used?

When selecting the right way to put background animals in I chose the technique of using a source image of the animal I want as a PNG then selecting the animal with the quick selection tool then going to the refine edges section and altering the sliders that said ‘contrast’ and ‘smooth’ then inversing the selection and deleting the edges of the animal therefore making the edges sharper. Then I placed them into the background after resizing them. I chose this simpler technique as these background characters have nothing to do with the story so I tried to get the best result in the easiest way.

When making the sun I chose to have a pattern overlay to make it more interesting. But first to make the sun look like a sun and not just an orange circle I used a technique where I actually placed two circle shapes the same size on top of each other. By applying different outer glows to each circle it created an edge that looked a lot more like a sun and something I was more proud of, I made sure I place the pattern over lay on the sun before adding the outer glows, this way the pattern itself would’t be added to the glow and it would just be the colour.

I think my use of using the Polygonal lasso tool to select and area of the background then taking a source image of a normal sunset and adding a cutout filter then applying a clipping mask to it might not have achieved the best possible outcome and some parts of the sky are so contrasting and so detailed it takes away from the impact of the image as a whole. Maybe a nice blended gradient with some clouds that are rotoscope as not to look too detailed might have looked a bit more friendly and would have fit with the whole image style more. I used this same technique for the hills as well but using the refine edges tool with the polygonal lasso tool to create a smooth hill shape. I then added colour and an altered overlay image, tuned down the opacity and warped it to shape, this I feel was the best possible way to do the hills and I am please with the result.

What do you like/dislike about how your final product looks?

I think the sky could be better. Its quite complicated and overpowering in some shots and I think it takes away from the other graphics on the page sometimes which are the most important. I think that it could be a bit softer maybe and not have colours that are so bright and powerful, I think it would look better as more of a subtle gradient maybe. I think maybe I could have put more time into the style of characters I wanted, I was planning to use more pattern overlays and things to help the book stand out more and be more quirky but I just settled of normal fur overlays with my characters which still looks good but I feel might have been more fun for children to have weird out of the ordinary characters to follow. I also think more could have been put into making the characters more friendly and nice to look at, I think this is partly due to the eyes I used. I used the same set of eyes for each of the characters which helped a lot to make them look like they were part of the same book but I think the eyes themselves could be made to look a bit more cuter and likable. The characters look more like pictures and not like actual characters. The characters that look the most likable are the lion and the elephant and I think this is due to the fact that the elephant has a blank expression and therefore look innocent and the lion has a smile which shows happiness but the giraffe and the wildebeest don’t loom as lovable as the other two and I think this is due to their expressions not being as well drawn.

I like the use of small animals and background objects, I feel as though this adds a great amount of depth to the graphics and makes it seem less like a flat image and more like an actual environment, also by adding multiple background items it help fill the page and makes sure that each patch of space is used for something. I think this is good for kids as it means they can go back and have even greater enjoyment from looking at the pictures. Younger children will find it more enjoyable having more things to look at other than what's just been told to them. I am also pleased with the technique I used to for the ground and hills, but I think what made this technique really work was the fact that I warped the images after they were overlaid to help mould to the shape of the hill, and by adding a cut out filter it helped the pictures I used stay in the simple cartoon style I was using.

Why did you include the content you used?• I chose to make my characters animals due to the fact they would be more child friendly and would be

easier for children to enjoy and understand. It also makes sure that the characters are easy to tell apart as they are so different . Animals are also very popular in other children's books such as ‘The Gruffalo’ or ‘The Selfish Crocodile’ children prefer to follow and enjoy animals more than people as they are different and lovable.

• I chose the setting of Africa as its very famous and even kids will know what kind of place Africa is, also sue to the fact that Africa is famous for its animals and there are lots of iconic animals to choose from when doing my book. Africa also has a very distinct style and character to it which can be easily translated into comic style or another visual style and still be recognisable and iconic. Africa also has a very distinct colour scheme and would give be a good range of colour to use to achieve a hot African feel to the pictures I tried to find lots of iconic shapes and images associated with Africa such as the animals and the iconic tree shapes. Choosing this setting helped me decide what kinds of animals I would put into my book and what I would have to change from the original story in order to make it seem like it actually is set in Africa.

• When making my characters I tried to choose recognisable animals that children would enjoy to follow. I chose to give all my character the same eyes as it makes them look like they are designed with the same thoughts and style in mind. I chose different fur overlays for each character also so they looked more like real animals but kept the faces quite simple, I did this so their expressions would be easier to read especially by children who would be mainly the ones looking at the pictures and not reading.

• I chose PT Serif as my font as all serif fonts are easier to read than the average font and serif fonts are by far the most used fonts in children's books as children and distinguish between each letter more efficiently. This is also the best font for children who are trying to read and as my book might be too hard for younger children to read by themselves its something that they can certainly use to help learn as they get older. I made it an appropriate size that wasn’t too small so younger children could read with more ease.

• I purposely made my characters a more simpler style than the background so they would stand out more against the colour and detail I used.

What signs, symbols or codes have your used in your work?

• Choices of colour, style, locations, character design and tone all give additional meaning to your work.

• With my colour scheme I tried to use many shades of warm colours like reds, oranges, yellows and beiges as well as different greens and blues. This colour scheme was one of the main aspects that I think made the setting really feel like a hot desert are like Africa. By keeping these colour as recurring themes it really tied the pages together and made them seem like they were indeed all from the same book.

• With the setting of Africa I tried to use many iconic images such as the wispy trees that are found all around Africa and in illustrations of Africa made famous by films like ‘the lion king’ I also took influence by using things such as the huge sun and the hill like horizons.

• When it came to my giraffe character who is a king in my story I thought it was best to use small symbolic things rather than just dressing him all up in royal posh clothes, I opted to just use a simple gold crown on his head to symbolise his character as a king as crowns are a universal symbol for power and royalty.

What representations can be found in your work?

• How are men, women or children shown in your work? Does your work feature different ages, races, social groups or religions? Does a lack of any variety of character types create its own representation?

• There are only two women characters in my book and one is only motioned by name and the other is the wife of the main character, in the book the woman tells everyone something she shouldn't have and as they are not other woman characters that do anything positive within the book it could be seen as a negative representation of women but the main character in the story find a flower and wants to give it to his wife to show her how much he loves her which I think help edge away from that negative representation. I think also the fact there were no women in my original folktale story I took influence from which also might have made me think of my characters a certain way.

• As the characters are all animals I cannot really show race or religion based on the characters themselves as they are not people I can only show social groups and ages but even with them in mid my characters ages are not specified and there are no children characters in my book. I think in this way it lacks variety and I maybe could have done more to show different kinds of people reflected in the animals.

What style have you employed in your products?

• When I came to visual style I looked at modern children's books such as The Gruffalo and The Selfish Crocodile among others and I really like that their illustrations were bold and colourful compared to older more traditional children's books. I also liked how in some of them a lot of patterns were used to give certain books an individual style which I took influence from, I also took great care in the colours of book and the schemes I would use over and over again to help tie to book together and make each page equal. As I was using the setting of Africa to help my colour schemes I picked very warm colours like reds oranges and yellows.

What were the strengths and weaknesses of the pre-production and planning

• A strength of the planning is I was quite through when researching the kinds of styles I wanted to take influence from. I did this by looking at other children's books and TV characters and looking at the basic shapes colours and styles used to make them and all their narrative environments. A weakness of my planning is the fact I didn’t have a super clear idea of who my target audience were going to be and I think that my actual graphics might have been different if I had more of a clear understanding of who I was making the graphics for.

• When it came to time management I feel I was really good a getting my assets completed in good time to a good standard. For example when making the animals I made the heads separately from the bodies and the bodies separate from the background and I feel I used the right amount of time on each section and my time was shared equally between each asset.

Historical and cultural context

• I think compared to older children books this has a lot less writing and the illustrations are more modern compared to older books that maybe had paintings and intricate illustrations that were integrated into the text on the pages.

• I think my book is better compared to books like The Selfish Crocodile and The Gruffalo in the sense that they combine modern art style with traditional looking text, they also keep to a good colour scheme and a good style that I think helps tie to book together. Also the fact that the characters are animals also isn't as traditional and I feel this is also a very modern and new compared to older children stories.

Peer Feedback• Some of the responses I agree with are the fact I need to be more clear

with my target audience, I didn't really have a clear idea of the exact age demographic I was going for when I started making the book and maybe if I did the book might have been different in some way. I also agree with the fact I maybe didn't alter my folk tale story enough from the beginning I only changed things like the characters and the setting and thing like small plot points children wouldn't understand as much, I should have really added more of my own story and more of a personal twist the narrative. I agreed with the fact that I was quite clear in certain aspect such as the key techniques and methods I would be using to make my book.

• I maybe disagree with the fact I could have elaborated more on my mood boards as I feel the amount of photos on the mood board isn't as important as the photos themselves and I feel the photos and pictures that are on there represent well the ideas I had in mind when making the book