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.

Add additional slides as you need to. Don’t be restricted by what is here.

Any blank slides should be deleted before submission.

Does your final product reflect your original intentions?

• There have been some slight changes between the original plans through the flat plans and into post production. The biggest change would have been the way that I changed from having one picture per page to having two images per page. Another thing I changed was from the flat plan to the final image where I have made the text in the white box smaller to allow me to use the same size font universally throughout the book. A further point where my product does not represent my intentions is right at the beginning of the book. I had intended to start the story at an earlier point to tell the story of Danae’s evil Father and how they end up lost at sea but due to the 12 page limit on the books I had to cut that bit out and change it from the chest he locked them in to a boat that they took to make the story make sense, you can see how early in pre-production this was as the storyboards were drawn with a boat. Overall however I believe that other than the three main things above the final product remains true to the original intentions. The storyline follows the same one that I planned out, the characters and scenery looked and were positioned in just the way I wanted them to be and I believe I did this subconsciously too allow the scene to be interpreted easily by a child audience. I also blocked out the colours so that the edges could be easily distinguished and allowed the viewer to see with ease where the colours stop and start whereas I initially wanted to blend the colours creating a more realistic atmosphere.

How well have you constructed your images?

• The images themselves are fairly well structured in terms of their composition. I have tried to make sure there is a horizon line in all of my images therefore separating the background from the middle ground and therefore creating the illusion of space in the book. The characters are usually within the foreground of the book albeit with a few exceptions which allows the viewer to focus on whoever is taking part in that particular page. I haven’t used that much texture in my images, there is a little in pages 1 and 2 to give the sea a bit of definition and then again to give some more definition to a cave in page 9 but other than that I’ve only used block colours to give distinction between different objects. Having said that I did use colour to help distinguish the different regions of mid-to-foreground in the landscapes by using different shades of the foreground colour this can be seen clearly in the pages 5, 6 and 7 where I used this to help judge the supposed distance between the characters and the background.

How well have you used text to anchor your images

• The text and the images work very well for anchoring each other and giving the viewer a further level of context within the story. In the majority of the pages in the book, the text references the image and vice versa. However on page 11 the text says something about how Perseus runs to the exit and is chased by the two other Gorgons that are in the cave but, I haven’t referenced this through an image to allow people to get a good understanding of this and how it plays out in the book. Another example would be on page 5 when I mention the fact that Perseus turns to look back at his house I again don’t show it so the audience is left in the dark about how this looks.

Is your product suitable for your audience?

• In my Proposal I stated that the book was for the children of around the age of 8-10 years old. The reasoning for this was that at the time of writing the Proposal I was going to retell the entire story but due to the page limitations I couldn’t but the full story of Perseus has quite a few little plot details and twists that you need to be older to have a better understanding of it. Due to this not being as much of a factor anymore the main reason the audience is still the older end of the primary school age is that the language used in the original story would be too advanced in places for younger children to get an understanding of and therefore the book would be wrong for them. In the book, although I have adapted words that were too advanced for this age of child, I have kept the same sort of linguistic style and therefore I feel the age is still appropriate. I also said in the Proposal that I felt that the book would naturally appeal more to the male audience than the female audience and I stand by that decision as at that age the idea of killing would appeal more to a male audience however, I haven’t geared the book to exclusively appeal to a male audience that’s just how I think the story will appeal to people.

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

• In my book I used a fairly specific group of Photoshop tools to finish my book. These include using the multi select marquee tool which helped me immensely in the Rota-Scope process which I used extensively for my book this added a certain level of cartoon-like art style to the images and I prefer this style of image. Another way that I achieved this comic book style was by using the fill tool when it came to painting the characters. This made the colours more defined which emphasised the cartoon-like feel I wanted in my book because of the lack of detail I put on. Other than this I really didn’t use many other tools. I would occasionally use the shape tool but this was

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

• One of the best features in my book is the simplistic style of the characters and the backgrounds. I think this will appeal more to children due to the amount off bright colours that will attract the children's eyes to the different aspects of the image. One major thing I don’t like is that the character poses aren’t very varied. I think, to save time in the production process, I re-used the same character models and just tweaked little bits, for instance the model of Perseus in pages 1, 5 and 6 are the same. The model in page 1 is the original, I then took it in image 5 where I flipped it horizontally and re-coloured it accordingly, the kept the same orientation when I put it into page 6 but removed the majority of his face and covered it with hair and I removed any of the front detail from his tunic. I then painted over the back of his arm to make it look more natural and the same for the back of the neck where I painted the tunic to go higher up and help distinguish that this shot is from the back. This is the main thing I personally dislike about the book because of the fact that the re-use of some of the models means that you have a lack of character movement and emotion because they are always positioned the same way.

These are the three images where the Perseus model was re-used. As you can see the arms are the same if a little

tweaked and the legs are in the same position. Which gets a bit repetitive when you see them.

Why did you include the content you used?

• In the book I used a serif font known as Bauserif for any of the bits of writing in the book this was to give the look of a realistic Greek writing making the book slightly more appealing to kids by making it slightly gimmicky. I used the cartoon-like Rotoscope technique when drawing my objects to again make the images look a bit simple, a bit gimmicky, to appeal to the children who would be reading the book in the first place. Also, by using this style of imagery it allows the viewer to see clearly exactly what’s going on in the image due to the definite edges in the image and its colouring. The colours themselves are largely light, bright colours. This is true even on page one where the story starts in a storm and although it is a page covered in dark colours, the colours I used were bright versions of the dark colours and that allows to keep the children’s attention in the book. In the later pages that feature Perseus outside are generally just made up of different shades of Pastel colours which further captures the attention of the child reading the book and therefore keeps them interested in it, which, in a classroom environment is what you as a teacher want.

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

• As I said before the colours on Page 1 are quite ominous and dark representing the direness of the situation they are in. This with the addition of the lightning tells the reader that the characters are in trouble before they’ve even read the passage. I used red on Perseus’ tunic as opposed to the white of the gods and blue of King Polydectes because the colour red gives the impression of the character being strong, powerful, determined to achieve his goal and passionate about what he believes is right. King Polydectes on the other hand has a Blue Tunic/Tuxedo which gets the connotations of Power and Seriousness, his hair being a dark orange gives his character further connotations in the form of deceit and distrust when the two are mixed together you get the character of King Polydectes in the book and these two examples help to identify the good and bad people in the book without having to read extra details. The length and peril of Perseus’ journey to find medusa is reinforced by the fact I made the pathways out to be single dirt tracks with no strait ways from point A to B, but also he is so far from any form of civilization due to the fact you see him crossing vast open planes and mountainous regions in the area to find this cave.

What representations can be found in your work?

• The fact that my work is a direct retelling of the original story shows that I haven’t created the following representations and they are therefore the representations of different groups from the perspective of the original author.

• However there are several representations in the book that feature different groups of people. The males in the book represent the Hero, Villain and the Helpers in the book making them key characters in the book and get the bigger roles if you like. The women in the book represent the trophy/prize, one of the helpers and the pseudo-villain making them necessary to the story the don’t nearly have the same presence in the book as the male characters. The book does not feature any form of other races or ethnic backgrounds as all the ancient Greeks would have been Caucasian due to their secluded area in Greece, there are no religions depicted in the original story so I didn’t include any of them.

What style have you employed in your products?

• I took a large influence in character design from various Anime series that I watched growing up (namely Yu-Gi-Oh! GX and Pokemon) which is ultimately represented in the character’s hairstyles as I was struggling to make it look realistic. From there I changed the look of entire book making it look a lot more cartoon-like in its appearance to help the hair look more natural. This also helped with the way that I was able to then block colour areas of the image furthering the cartoon-like influences that initially took over the production. Ultimately I chose and continued with the cartoon-like visuals for my book because they were a lot easier to make and position character wise and also the colouring being block colours made the whole process a lot less time consuming and it gave me definite edges in the colours so you can see where things start and finish and makes everything more appealing to a child who isn’t necessarily looking at the image for its complexity and detail, more at the pretty colours.

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

• The whole pre-production process went fairly smoothly as a result of the kind of planning documents I produced. They weren’t overly lengthy with little minute details but they were fairly self explanatory in what I wanted to do. So for example my storyboards were very basic in the way that they looked and explained things but they gave me all the guidance I needed to be able to picture how I wanted the page to look. When I got onto the flat plans I did two really good photo-montages to go in as my test pages. The rest were nowhere near as detailed but with the first two being like they were in production I was able to match the level of detail in all of my images to the first two pages. This saved me a lot of time in the actual production side of making the book as when I started I originally put my planning schedule to use the twelve allocated sessions as I thought that’s how long it would take me but I soon changed it to use eight sessions and I managed to hit that target as I had been able to keep that level of detail constant and not spend too long on one page. So on the whole I feel like my time was well managed as I finished slightly early on the eighth session this therefore means that my planning was also fairly strong as it allowed me to get the project finished for the deadline.

Historical and cultural context

• A quick search on Amazon shows that there are very few products that would be comparable to mine. One that I found was another retelling of Perseus by an author named Geraldine McCaughrean, she aimed her book like mine towards the older end of the school age with the book being suitable for 10 – 14 year olds as opposed to mine being suitable for 8 – 10 year olds. Her book has no images other than the cover which tells you nothing about the story but the sentences are a lot more complex than mine and the book is a lot more word heavy than mine. Other than that one there is a more current retelling in the form of an eBook to be downloaded to the Kindle tablet. Perseus: Early Myths: Greek myths for children is an eBook is written by Simon Spence for children aged between 4 – 8 years old, this age bracket falls just below mine of 8 – 10 years old meaning that between the two retellings mine is there for people who aren’t confident enough to read the more advanced version but are bored of the younger version. The younger version also utilises imagery in it, the images are fairly cartooney like mine but they don’t share striking similarities. The one by Spence looks rather more hand drawn as opposed to the entirely Rotoscoped imagery in my book.

Peer Feedback

• Summarise peer feedback and discuss– Responses you agree with– Responses you disagree with