Digital Graphic Narrative Planning

Use this booklet to help structure your planning and collate your planning documents.

Considerations:

There are lots of things to consider in this project. Fill out each section in detail to show you have thought about each one. You should imagine that this is a live project, so considerations like cost, quantity and codes of practice must be thought about in that context rather than just as a college project.

Costs:The cost of the production process for me would be very low as I don’t need any external resources to complete the process and therefore don’t have to spend the money.

Available resources:The resources that are available to me to use for my project include Adobe Photoshop to allow me to rotoscope existing stock images and turn my flat plans into the pages of the book, I will therefore need the source images to allow me to rotoscope them and edit them for my book. I will also need the flat plans I made and the original script to make sure my story follows both my plans and plays out the way I want but also sticks to the original enough for people to recognise the story.

QuantityI don’t expect my book to be a massive hit with hundreds-of-thousands of people flocking to buy it to read to their kids. However I expect it sell several hundred with it being marketed towards schools for it to be used for advanced literacy classes to help kids understand the more advanced ways of forming sentences and understanding more complicated words that they may have not really used or come across before.

Audience and Target Market:The audience for my book would be as stated above not necessarily parents wanting to buy this book to read to their children but a different audience consisting of primary/secondary schools (mainly primary) where they would be teaching advanced literacy skills to children that need to start forming more coherent and complex sentences and learning to use a more advanced vocabulary.

Quality Factors:The quality of the book overall would need to be consistently the best it can be so that the target audience would see it as a quality product and invest money in buying copies of the book for the children to learn from. This would mean that as the book’s illustrator for example I will have to make sure that all the pages have the same level of detail and effort put into it.

Codes of Practice:The code of practice that will be used includes the following rules.“The publishing contract must be clear, unambiguous and comprehensive, and must be honoured in both the letter and the spirit.”This means that the contract set out by the publishers should be clear and easy to understand with no hidden clauses or little traps that could be there to trick you into signing for something you didn’t want in the contract. “The publisher must not cancel a contract without good and proper reason”This basically means that the Publisher cannot drop the author whenever they feel like. As long as they are producing the book ready for the deadline to a good standard, the publishers have to keep you.

“The publisher should be willing to share precautions against legal risks not arising from fault or carelessness by the author” Although the author is primarily responsible for making sure the book doesn’t contain any libellous or unsuitable content, as the publisher can also be held responsible. The publishers would have to work closely with the author to make sure this doesn’t happen and be fixed fairly quickly.Regulation:My book has no moving/pop-up parts in it and therefore isn’t classed as a toy. This means that the regulations that adhere to toys don’t affect me. There are books that do have pop up or moving parts and have to be checked for anything that could present a choking hazard or could potentially come off the book and would therefore need to warn people about this outcome.

Copyright:There will be very few problems in relation to copyright if any as I will ensure that I will be using royalty free stock images from a stock image library so as to avoid any violations of copyright in my project. Another area where I could potentially pick up issues to do with copyright is when I am downloading and using fonts from the website Dafont some of them are only free for private use and some are free for use (total use) so I’d have to check which one the font is enabled for.

Ethical Issues:Ethical issues should not be a problem as I do not have any representations of any racial/gender/sexual orientated/ religious stereotypes in the book and therefore would not be found offensive to anyone.

Resources:A successful project relies on good planning. Considering all the resources you will need for a project and then assessing which you already have and which you need will help ensure you are ready to start your project.

If there is a resource you don’t currently have, then consider how you are going to get it before you go in to production.

Resource:Do you have it? What do you need to do to get it?

 Computer  Yes  Provided by college

 Adobe Photoshop Yes  Installed on computer

 Specific Font (Bauserif) Yes  To be installed from DaFont

 (Potential) Driving Equipment  NoI do not have drawing equipment as such and will therefore need to borrow it from college if the need arises.

 Work area  Yes  Provided by college

     

     

Production Schedule:Delivering your project on time is vital. In order to do this, you need a solid plan of action. This will help you divide up your work in to manageable chunks to be tackled one at a time. It will also allow you to plan which tasks need to be done in which order. It will also allow you to track your progress each day. If you are falling behind, you will need to modify the way you work. If you work faster than expected, you can clearly see what the next steps you need to take are.

Each session is a half day of college.

Session 1:

 Develop Character Models for pages one and two: Positioning Hair styles Clothing Colours

 Developing generic background for pages one and two: Scenery Objects/Obstacles Colours Skyboxes

 Adding Minor Details to the Images to enhance the level of detail.

 

Session 2: Developing Character Models for Pages Three and Four:

Positioning Hair Styles Clothing Colours

Developing generic background for pages Three and Four: Scenery Objects/Obstacles Colouring Shading

 Making sure details are consistent with the background.

 

Session 3:

 Developing Character Models for Pages Five and Six: Positioning Colours Clothing Hairstyles Accessories

Develop Landscapes for Pages Five and Six: Scenery Shading House colours Pathways Skyboxes

Make sure shading is smooth yet discernable from each other to help distinguish distance.

 

Session 4:Develop Character Models for pages Seven and Eight should be relatively straightforward as its similar to the last two pages:

Positioning Colours Clothing Hairstyles Accessories Shading

Develop landscape for pages Seven and Eight: Scenery Pathways Shading Sunset colours Skyboxes Mountain Range

 Make sure the sunset looks believable; make sure to add different shades to the clouds on page eight.

 

Session 5:

Develop Character Models for pages 9 and 10: Positioning Colours Hairstyle changes Accessories Perseus’ Helmet

Develop scenery in pages 9 and 10: Cave Exterior and Interior Shading Pillars Lighting Details

 Make sure the cave is lit correctly; add detail to exterior shot.

 

Session 6:Develop Characters for final Pages Eleven and Twelve:

Positioning

Hairstyle Colours Make sure things are consistent with the page Three and Four characters. Accessories Designing Perseus’ Helmet from the Front

 Develop the Backgrounds Colours Details Consistent with Pages Three and Four Adding Table in foreground Clock on wall Page 12 to help establish it’s a different wall to page Eleven.

 Make sure everything is consistent between the pages 3 and 4 and, 11 and 12

 

Session 7:

Design a suitable sized White text box and insert it on pages 1 – 6.

 Write out the text for the specific pages in the white boxes using Bauserif Font on pages 1 – 6.

 

 

Session 8:

 Insert the white text box onto pages 7 – 11.

 Redesign the box for page 12.

 Write out the text into the boxes like before but make sure its tidy.

 

Session 9:

 

 

 

 

Session 10:

 

 

 

 

Health and safety:Your health and safety and that of those around you is very important. Just like in industry, an accident could prevent you from working. Whilst we don’t work in a highly dangerous environment, there are still risks. Some are short term, such as trips and spillages whilst others, such as long term damage to eyesight or back problems, may affect you much later in life.

Consider the risks based on the activities you will be undertaking during the project. Explain how you could prevent them from happening.

Ensure you reference appropriate pieces of legislation, design to protect people at work.

Health and Safety Issue How can you prevent it?

Potential trip hazard from cables. Make sure any wires are kept on tables to reduce the likelihood of a trip.

 Injury by a chair. Make sure that all chairs are under a desk when not in use so that injury is unlikely.

 Strained eyesight. Take regular breaks so that you don’t hurt/strain your eyes from staring at the computer for too long.

 Potential trip hazard from other objects. Make sure bags and other likely items are kept under a desk so that the hazard is reduced.

 Potential liquid Damage to computer. Make sure that all drink etc. are kept away from computers or keyboards so to avoid spillages.