Graphic Narrative Evaluation

Does your final product reflect your original intentions?

Before I planned any of the storyboarding for my final product I needed to do a draft of what the text will be because I knew there would be quite a lot due to me rhyming all of it. The reason to why I needed to map out my text before storyboarding is that I needed to know how much of the text (how many lines) were going to be on each page. When I had a first draft of the text finished I began to do a rough sketch of what I wanted each page to be before digitally doing them on Photoshop so I could add notes more easily and work from them. During the research for the final product I gained a lot of inspiration from ‘The Gruffalo’, by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler, on how I wanted to do layout of each page.

With certain pages within ‘The Gruffalo’ they would have multiple smaller images with the text beneath each image to help illustrate the story without pushing it all on one full page with one large block of text. This is something I decided to do with nearly half of the final pages that would require more text than others. Such pages 2 and 7. Doing flat plans helped me with decisions with how the layout of each page was going to be. This was because the digital flat plans were done on Photoshop (using ‘Brush Tool (B)’ in the size 36). Using the brush tool gave me a much closer representation of what the image will look like rotoscoped (using the Polygonal Lasso Tool (L)). Particularly in comparison to the rough sketches I’d done beforehand when storyboarding out ideas for the final product.

The final page was one that I was having issues with deciding over what I wanted it to look like. I wasn’t sure if I preferred to have all four of the characters at the end of the story as a final group shot or if I should do a completely new angle than I had done with the previous pages and have the farmer and the badger shaking hands (rather than having another full image with the farmhouse and it’s crops with the rolling hills in the background). But with the digital flat plans it helped me get a much better visualisation of what the final image could look like overall. In the end the final image came to be the farmer and badger shaking hands.

Of course the flat plans where rough and with the final pages were where I added much more detail, especially with the full landscape images. However, when looking at the digital flat plans it helped make the decision of keeping the pages with the three smaller images backgrounds blank with a block colour (such as page 7). Also changing the colour of the boxes for each page so that it doesn’t become repetitive with it’s layout. That way the attention is more on what is happen with the plot with the characters by keeping the images fairly simple in comparison to the more full page ones (such as page 1).

(Page 7) This is how I’ve used the original sketch storyboards to be digital flat plans on Photoshop until I rotoscoped it on to be the final page with more detail and with the text.

Like I had mentioned previously I wanted to have some pages be one full image whereas others have three small images on one page. This was inspired by ‘The Gruffalo’ by having this layout style for the final product. Having the backgrounds for the three smaller images was a better decision than having them be very colorful and graphic with quite a lot of detail because if they did have that as graphic a background as page one each box would look very enclosed and filled. It look much sharper and clean with it just being the characters and their speech-bubble.

Texture is something I focused on a lot with the farmer and the farmers wife because of their clothing. Both of the farmers wore quite baggy, layered items of clothing that were fabric that were bound to wrinkle. For instance the farmer wears a jacket that has quite large sleeves and the farmers wife wears an apron. Because of this I tried to put as much detail as possible with any of the fabrics in the images to give them more depth and movement, to make it look a little bit more realistic. There is an image on page 3 where the farmer has put the badger in a sack when capturing him. This needed to have quite a lot of wrinkling and shadows because the badger was moving around in there to try and escape. Doing this not only allowed the image to show some movement but it also made the image look a lot more realistic and easier to recognise. As well as the fabric that was used for the farmer and his wife I also tried giving their skin as much detail and texture as possible, especially with their hands. On page 3 the farmers hands are the only part of him you see, this meant I needed to make sure that the reader would be able to see that they were hands. Instead of just doing something quite rouge and simple like I had done with the badger and rabbits paws I made the farmer and his wife’s hands much more detailed with wrinkles, knuckles, shadows and palm lines. This is much more obviously shown with the final page (page 9) where the badger and the farmer are shaking hands and you get a comparison of how there’s more detail with the farmers hands to the badgers paw. Due to both farmers being slightly older (around late 50’s) and both being workers their hands needed more detail on them in the form of wrinkles, redness and any possible scares from previous work. There isn’t a distinct ‘bad guy’ in my story. In many of the traditional fairy tales and folktales they have a hero trying to defeat a villain. Such as ‘Sleeping Beauty’ and ‘Snow White’, both of which show the hero (the princess) trying to run away from the villain (a wicket queen or witch). True the badger does wrong by stealing from the farmer but he isn’t seen as a villain in the story, rather than being a ‘bad guy’ he’s just done something bad. So there isn’t any distinct colouring, for instance red or black showing the meaning of evil and danger, to make any of the characters seem like a villains, or even hero’s by making them bright happy/ pure colours like white.

How well have you constructed your images?

This was purely because I didn’t think that a specific ‘bad guy’ or a ‘good guy’ was needed for any of the characters and without them it didn’t effect the message that I was wanting to get across within this storyline. Instead I tried to make the colours very bright and visual for the viewer given that the audience that I am aiming for are young children and they’ll respond better to happy and bright images. With colour I also made certain that specific items in the images more recognisable with more bold exaggerated colours. For instance, on page 1 there were the carrots being bright orange, I made the farm-house bright red. Because when doing research for what the farmhouse could look like red was a popular choice amongst illustrations, shows and toys for children. Even though in reality these items may not always be as bright as I am portraying in these final images, doing it just makes them more distinguishable for children to recognise. I also had put texture within the buildings and scenery. With the overall appearance I wanted it to be bright and colourful so if any shading was needed it would become more visible. Page 1 had fencing where to add more detail and texture instead of having it be blank rectangles I made cracks and splinters to put on the boards. I would use the Polygonal Lasso Tool (L) to make a the new shape I wanted for a splinter and then by clicking on the right of my mouse over the constructed layer and a down menu that would appear ‘Layer Via Copy’. Once that layer had been created and displayed on side with the rest of the layers, such as ‘background’, I would double click on the layer wanted and the ‘Layer Style’ menu would come up. Then I would click on ‘Colour Overlay’ where a small rectangle would appear and when clicking on that which will display a colour scale where I would simply click on the colour that I would already have used for the fence board and it would appear on the colour scale. Then to make the colour lighter, or darker, I would click slightly up or down on the colour scale so that the splinter was the same range of colouring to the fence board it was already on. Doing this prevented me from having too many colours be mismatched when wanting to do slight shading and shadows.

(Page 6) When using the Colour Overlay scale to get the right colour whenever I wanted a deeper shade for shadowing or for the splintering of the wood. Also for making sure that all the shadows were the same colour for consistency.

The overall appearance on how I constructed my images has turned out how I initially planned. Even though they are rotoscoped cartoon versions of animals and people I wanted them to be recognisable and as realistic as possible. When researching styles of characters I took a lot of inspiration from Beatrix Potter’s drawings. Using her drawings as templateswas something I did to help get the right outline and proportions for the animals, for instance getting the rabbits ears in the right place and the badgers head in the right position. When doing this I did worry that I would end up copying her designs but I work around them rather than on them so I didn’t end up with the same kind of faces her characters.

The rest of the templates used for the designs for the animals were used with wildlife photography images from the internet. Getting images for the animals was much easier than getting image for the farmer and his wife. For two of the images I used my phone to take source images of my own and friends hands to get the right look and positioning that I wanted to achieve when rotoscoping the final product, purely because I couldn’t find the right images online. Both of the source images I took were for page 3. One for the farmers hand when he’s yelling ‘Stop!’ and the other for the farmers hand holding the sack that he’s captured the badger in.

The design for the farmer and the farmers wife were a similar style to when we had done our previous task of the photo story in the sense that I didn’t give them eyes or much of a face to show at all. When doing the photo it was because the story was a murder mystery whereas with this story it was because I wanted to keep more of the focus on the animals. Similar to the cartoon ‘Tom and Jerry’ where the creators kept all the people’s face covered but only showed their bodies. Inthe show it was because everything was from the animals perspective so people’s faces were out of their scope of vision but with my designs it was because the story was more about the animals than the farmers. So I wanted to put the attention more on their facial expressions than the people.

How well have you used text to anchor your images?

The way I decided to anchor my text with my images is by having the each line rhyme. There was not only ‘The Gruffalo’ that inspired me to rhyme the text for the final product but other workings such as Dr Seuss and traditional nursery rhymes. Research shows that if text that children are reading rhymes it will help them with spelling and reading in the future because they work with the sounds within words. If words share common sounds they often share common letters, for example ‘sell’ and ‘well’ both end in ‘ell’. Mental pictures are created, helping them expand their imagination, when text is like a song or a poem.

Because I had rhymed each line of text the overall amount of text for the story was quite long, especially in comparison with the amount of pages I had planned out with the flat plans. I’d only planned to do nine pages for the final product but I had fourteen lines of text to fit into it. Due to there being to many lines of text this meant I needed to fit around two to three lines of text on one page and having the images translate what was happening within the text. Having a lot of text meant that I would need to have more images so when I was doing research for inspiration for the characters I did research on how children’s books were laid out. There were many things that struck my interest in terms of layout on how the illustrator and authors would use their text. In many they would turn their text into shapes. They would curl and curve lines of text to fit around their image.

The layout ‘The Gruffalo’ inspired me the most in terms of how they split the text and images so it all fit together. I decided to do this with some of the pages rather than all of them so that the each page layout didn’t become repetitive. It was only for the pages that required a lot of text, the ones that had three to four pages. For instance on page 4, even though there were only two lines they were probably the longest ones. So having three image to illustrate what the text was saying was much more useful than having to fill one whole page, without the worry of trying to translate a lot of text onto one image. If I had tried to fit multiple lines of text onto only on image, rather than a few to anchor the two better, than the final product wouldn’t have worked together because there would be no visual explanation of what the text is explaining.

After making the images the text was something that was in need editing because some of the lines weren’t needed. Such as on page 6 there was a line that read, ‘The farmer was feeling such high woes that he cried tears that dripped down to his toes’. Because the image was already showing that the farmer was crying in the image the use of that line was pointless and could be deleted.

As well as rhyming the text I decided to use small images within speech bubbles to also illustrate what is happening on the page. I was inspired by comic books, in which they would use an onomatopoeia to express a certain noise such as ‘whoosh!’ but also small and simple illustrations in speech bubbles to explain what will happen next. For example, comic books like ‘Owly’ did this throughout the whole book rather than telling the story with text. I didn’t want to do this with all of the text because when trying it out there wasn’t enough detail to tell the whole story. However, it did work with the images not only to explain what the text was saying in more detail but also to add more to the illustrations besides the characters expressions.

Removing now un-necessary text once the image has been created

I took a lot of inspiration when researching children's story books by seeing that many of them had rhymed their texts. Such as traditional nursery rhymes and even some modern authors like Dr Seuss.

Is your product suitable for your audience?

I think that the final product that I’ve made is suitable for the audience that I have aimed for. The target audience I was aiming this children’s storybook, like I had said I in my proposal, was aged between six and eight years with the gender being unisex. Once I’d modified the tale to become a light-hearted tale with a meaning to it which was suitable for children to read about instead of the original tale which was very gruesome and dark. This is relevant with nearly all of the traditional fairy tales that have been published, many of which by the ‘Grimm Brothers’. Of course there are now films such as ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Sleeping Beauty’ that have been recreated by Disney to make them light-hearted tales with happy ending (‘Happily Ever After’) so that children won’t have to grow up hearing all of the grim and gory details that originallytook place. This type of production was needed for us when taking the traditional folktales and changing concepts within the plot line to make them much more suitable for children to read.

One of the concepts I had changed was the ending of the folktale. In the original Japanese Folktale the rabbit murdered the badger for doing the wrongs he’d done to the farmer, which was stealing from him and killing his wife for revenge for the farmer capturing him and in order to escape being captured by the farmer. To alter the tale and it much more suitable for children to read I’d changed the ending to the rabbit finding the badger after he’d escaped and telling him to go apologise for his wrongs. This was a more suitable message, and overall plotline, for children to read because it took away the violence and made the folktale a story with a moral to learn from.

I had made the audience to be unisex, this meant I needed to make sure that there wasn’t really anything within the story (text and design) that would make it seem as though it was trying to appeal to one gender over the other. Doing this did require making sure that I wasn’t stereotyping anything or anyone. For instance, the rabbit is a girl but I didn’t sexualise this character to look like what many cartoons would have. Such as giving her have thick eye-lashes or breasts because I wanted her to represent an animal not a person. I was much more concerned about how they were being expressive facial and with gestures to illustrate what the text was saying rather than asking if the characters looked liked male or female.

Even though I did change the story to have a moral at the end of it, of which you should apologise for your wrongs, there wasn’t much in this story that would imply the the reader needed to have a hobby to want to read this folktale. There is the angle that the reader would most likely have an interest in animals if they’re going to read this but nothing else. The story, even originally, isn’t tailored to suit someone's personal interests because the moral that I was trying to put out was more important.

Story Overview

The Badger is eating the Farmers crops, when the Farmer catches him doing this he puts him in a cadge. But the Badger tricks the Farmers Wife into letting him go which makes the Farmer upset because he needs to be taught a lesson and he still has no crops due to the Badger eating them. When the Rabbit comes up to the Farmer asking for a carrot the says he can’t and explains why (via the Badger) which makes the Rabbit angry. So the Rabbit goes to the Badger and tells him off and that he needs to go apologise for his wrongs. The Badger is shocked that he has done so much damage and apologises to the Farmer. The Farmer is touched and thanks/ forgives the Badger, in the end they agree to be friends.

Changing the very gruesome and dark areas of the story into something lighthearted was a bit of a challenge because I needed to strip-back a lot of the content but I tried to take lines and features from the original folktale into my rhyming text. For example ‘The old woman had a good and simple nature, and could not think badly of anyone’ and ‘He thought and thought for a long time, trying to hit upon some plan by which he might escape’ into, ‘Now to you or to me the badger may not seem so cunning but he planned to trick the farmers wife who was so loving. The farmers wife tried to ignore the badgers saddening pleas but good natured she was she set him free.’

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

The main technique that I used when making my final product on Photoshop was rotoscoping. To do this I needed to used the Polygonal Lasso Tool (L) to make each of the layers to build up the image. What I liked about using the Polygonal Lasso Tool is that you can make your own style easier than if you were to use any of the shape tools. When making my characters I didn’t want them to look like any other illustrators designs, although I did get a lot of inspiration from Beatrix Potters designs on the animals in her storybooks. She did make them look very realistic but they wore clothes and walked on their hind legs. I didn’t want the look be to that extent but I did like having the characters be as realistic as possible. So I thought the best way to do this was by rotoscoping to get finer and sharper edges. I was able to achieve this easier with the Polygonal Lasso Tool rather than any of the shape tools, such as the Ellipse Tool U.

Badgers and rabbits have a lot of detail on them, for instance the rabbits ears have a curved point on the end and they have a small curved nose, and to get these details right I saw much better use of using rotoscoping to get these smaller details. When using the shape tools I found that they didn’t really allow me to get the smaller details that I wanted, like the two stripes on the badgers face. If I were to use one of the shape tools on details like the those they would have ended up looking as though they were cubism rather than realistic which was more of the style that I was aiming for.

Using the ‘warp’ tool (which is used by making a layer (whether that be using the Polygonal Lasso Tool or a shape tool such as the Ellipse Tool U) and having that layer selected, which you’ll know is selected because it will be highlighted in the layers bar, and going Edit> Transform> Warp) was an way of altering the shape of the already made circles and rectangle. However when editing the shapes it didn’t manage to get the look that I was aiming for, instead the images ended up looking misshapen and untidy. I could be because I’m not very well skilled with using the shape and warp tools together but I found rotoscoping to be best technique for the design and style that I wanted for my characters and overall layout. Rotoscoping was the primary technique that I had used for the production of my pages but I did struggle with making the images smooth and clean. By this I mean that when making the head of one of the characters, anything that needed a curve, would end up with points and edges for not being careful.

This did mean that I needed to go over a lot of the layers by making small selections over each of the points and edges that needed to be smoother. To do this I just clicked on which ever layer that needed to be corrected, such as the one labelled ‘Head’, and got made small selections on wherever the points were using the Polygonal Lasso Tool (L). You don’t need to make a new layer but just the selection and once that’s made you press the ‘backspace’ key on the keyboard and whatever was in the selection goes from the layer you clicked on.

Symbol for Polygonal Lasso Tool (L)

Using the Polygonal Lasso tool on the layer needed to make a selection then pressing backspace to smooth out a point.

When using the space (such as the Ellipse Tool U), or the Polygonal Lasso Tool (L), you got Edit> Transform> Warp to help alter your layers and overall image to be the right size.

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

Likes: What I like about final page 1 is the detail that I had put on the background. Mostly with the hills where I made three different individual flowers and just copied them (after linking the layers for the one flower I was copying at a time). Once copied I just dragged the new flower layers to another position on the hill. I also like the angel of page with the badger being close up to the front of the page with the farmhouse being smaller because it’s in the distance. This is clearer with the fence because as it gets further back into the page (to the farmhouse) the fence gets thinner and smaller (in height).Dislikes: I wish that I would have added more detail to the farmhouse overall. Reason being that close up and from a distance it only looks like a few simple shapes put together (which it is). But given that I had put detail onto the roof, with the markings and stains making the house look more wore than blank, I could have added detail to the walls of the house and the door to make it more realistic and interesting to look at close up and at a distance.

Likes: What I like about final page 2 is that I have the badger on three different angles rather than one. And not just by selecting the same layers for the one angle and going Edit> Transform> Flip Horizontal to make a slightly different angle. This is something I did with other pages but with this one I wanted to make as many different angles and positions given that I had the chance to make three new ones.

Dislikes: I don’t particularly like the lines I had done for the first of the three images because they don’t look very eye-catching. I could have given them more depth and size by making the width of them slightly bigger, because, from a distance, they look as though some of them are smaller than the other. This could be from cropping the two above the text so they wouldn’t overlap with one another.

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

Likes: What I like about final page 3 is that the detail on the three images make them look more realistic. This is shown more with the first two of the three images because the animals look quite cartoon like but because the first two were of a person (the farmer) I could add detail like wrinkles and creases in the fabric. Particularly with the sack in the second of the three images that the farmer captures the badger in. I needed to put a lot of shadowing and creases to indicate that the badger was struggling and moving around quite a lot.

Dislikes: What I dislike about the page is the colour for the background colour for the images in contrast to the actual illustrations. Unlike on the other two images where the background worked fine. This is shown much more with the first of the three images, where you only the see the farmers hand and a speech bubble of him yelling ‘Stop him!’. Because I had made his skin quite pink because he’s a farmer and he works with his hands a lot it was so vivid against the green background it became quite hard to focus on the two colours together.

Likes: What I like about final page 4 is how I’ve rotoscoped the farmers wife. I’d gotten an image off of the internet in order to get the right clothing style and shape of how I wanted her to look. Even though the image I had selected wasn’t exactly how I picture her standing I worked my way around the outline of her body to make the style I was wanting. I like how I’ve managed to make her quite realistic and recognizable as the farmers wife. Even though it’s quite a stereotypical look, having her in a dress and white apron. However, for children it will make more sense for them to see her as a farmers wife wearing those items.

Dislikes: What I dislike about final page 4 is how I’ve made the farmers wife’s hands. Because the image I’d selected of the internet had the woman holding a plate I tried to make her without it. Because of this her hands are in an odd shape, as well as the shading being too dark. It almost looks like her hands are injured rather than just having shadows and detail on them.

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

Likes: What I like about final page 5 are the paw prints on crops as the badger is leaving the farmhouse. I like that I made them in different sizes (smaller by the farmhouse door, further into the page. And larger as the badger comes closer to the front of the page).

Dislikes: Again I dislike how there isn’t a lot of detail on the farmhouse walls and door. There’s quite a lot of detail spread over the majority of the page, such as the hills, fence and even on the roof and stone path on the front of the farmhouse. Especially given that the door is now open I could have put detail on the inside of the door. For example having wooden carvings or hooks on the inside of the door.

Likes: What I like about final page 6 is the detail I had put on the crops. By taking out the crops and leaving only the dirt from where the badger had ran on along with the paw prints over them to show the damage the badger had done to the farmers crops. I also like how I’ve given the page a new angle. With the other full landscape images, like page 1 and 5, I had the hills and the farmhouse in the background. So rather than having that again, particularly since the page prior to this had that background I decided to make the angle as though it was the view from the front of the farmhouse (what the badger would have seen as he was running away from the farmers).

Dislikes: What I dislike about this page is the that I had put the rabbit in the distance of the page, just in front of the crops, to indicate that she was going to be the next new character and on the next page. However, the colour of the rabbit’s fur doesn’t really stand out against the colour of the hills almost making the rabbit completely unseen. I could have also added more detail to that rabbit. For instance having her in bouncing up to the farmer with the addition of a shadow underneath her to give the image more movement and that would have possible made the rabbit stand out more.

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

Likes: What I like about final page 7 is that I had the rabbit shown at two different angles, this was to show more expression to how she’s feeling when the farmer told her that the badger had stolen had from him. I also like how I used a previous image of the badger eating from page 2 for the speech bubble on the second image to have a bit of a reminder to what had happened previously. I preferred doing that than using smaller illustrations in the speech bubble like I had done in previous one. Such as the speech bubble on the first image of this page (with the rabbit asking about having a carrot by having a rotoscoped image of a carrot and a question mark). Using the image image of the badger eating on page 2 made more sense to what the farmer was saying than doing something more vague.

Dislikes: What I dislike about this page is that the farmer in the second image doesn’t look very detail, especially compared to how he looked on page 6. It could be because the speech bubble was covering most of him because of the illustration inside of it but I think he looks too squished in the image altogether. I could have spread him out more by using the scale or warp tool to change his shape.

Likes: What I like about final page 8 is that even though there isn’t a lot happening in the image in comparisons to others it works well because it’s very clear and having lots of detail in the background and around the badger and the rabbit was unnecessary, it would have looked too cluttered. This page showed the detail on the badger and the rabbit much more clearly that on other pages, especially with the rabbit because the previous images of the rabbit were quite small.

Dislikes: What I dislike about this page is that I could have done something different about the rabbit on this page. I had used the same layers for the rabbit on page 7 for this page but I just when Edit> Transform> Flip Horizontal and expanded it. I could have had the rabbit with her arms out to show more expression. As well as narrowing her eyebrows more to show her anger more clearly.

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

Likes: What I like about final page 8 is that this is probably the most meaning full layout out of all of them. Having the farmer and the badger shake hands shows a since of understanding and forgiveness. When doing the flat plans I contemplated having the final image be of all of the characters together but in order to do that I would have needed to show the farmer and the farmers wife’s face. So I would have had to design the page to be of their backs turned to the page with the badger and the rabbit in the distance. This would have made the image look cluttered and messy. This was a much better look for the final image. There was quite a lot of text on this page as well so keeping it clear and easy to read was important and I think I achieved that with this final page.

Dislikes: What I don’t like about this final image is that there is a lot of detail on the farmers hand whereas there is very minimal detail on the badgers paw. True I wanted to make the farmer and the farmers wife more realistic but with this image being so close up you can see the difference between them. It almost looks as though I gave up with putting detail on the badger altogether when really I just didn’t want to add so much detail on the fur given that I hadn’t done that with the other images of the badger other than shadowing and certain lines around the arms and legs.

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

Likes:

Something that I liked about my final product is the design overall. I was glad that I managed to make my own kind of style and didn’t copying anyone else’s illustrations, even when using someone else’s illustration as a template to get the right outline of the characters proportions. When using already made illustrations as templates I made sure that I altered them and didn’t follow their design completely. For instance when using Beatrix Potters drawings for the rabbit and the badger I didn’t use the same colours and facial expressions. As well as when using source images that either I had taken or had found on the internet. For example, with the farmer and his wife I needed to get images that were in the right positioning's to fir the plot but I didn’t want them to look exactly like the images I was using as the template for them.

Dislikes:

What I dislike about my final product is that the designs could be neater. When looking through the pages there are curves that could have been smoothed down. For instance, the hills and the clouds had points on some of the edges which shouldn’t have been there. As well as adding more detail with certain things like the farmhouse and any shadowing. I was fine with putting detail wear creases were needed on clothing or on any fabric but with shadows from where any of the characters are standing could have been better. The text is also something that could’ve been improved on because the wording and rhythm were off with the majority of the sentences. Even with the improvements that were made from the first draft to the final product there were improvements that could have been made with how the text in the end.

Likes:

Using someone else’s illustrations and photography as templates to get the right proportions for the people and animals.

When looking closer at the images there were many edges and sharp points where they should be smooth like with the clouds on page one and additional pages.

There could have been an addition of shadows under the animals. With the rabbit on page 6 I could have had her bouncing up to the farmer with a shadow underneath her. As well as with the badger on page 2, because he’s in a leaning position there could’ve been a shadowing over the crops to show where his arm and hand is going.

Dislikes:

Why did you include the content you used?

I wanted the colours for the images to be bright and eye-catching for the viewer. That way the readers eyes will travel around the page more, for example on the hills (which are already bright green) there are blue, yellow and white flowers scattered around them so that they’re not just bland and one block colour. The addition of the different colour and shaped flowers added to the scenery and became more eye catching for the viewer. Even though many of the items in the images may be an unrealistic representation of what they really look like, such as the carrots being a neon orange and the farmhouse being bright red when the farmhouse could be white or green. But exaggerating the colours made them more recognizable, particularly for a younger audience. Even making the crops bright colours with each line so that they weren’t bland and unnoticeable in comparison to everything else on the page.

The colours with the characters weren’t even as realistic as there are with everyday life. For instance with the badger. Traditionally badgers are black and white but instead of making the badgers face a bright white with black stripes I decided to make it a few shades darker than white so that it would’t be so and bright and distracting. As well as having grey shadowing and lines to show where his arms and legs are. This is shown quite clearly on page 8 with the badger standing up you can see the round outline of his arms, and slightly his paws. As well as on the page 9 you see the badgers full paw with his claws being shown my grey lines rather than giving him pointed claws on the tips of his paw. The badgers paw on the page ended up looking more cartoon like than realistic, especially given that I had made the farmers hand quite realistic, because I had kept it a block colour like I had done on previous pages. But it is unrealistic to have a badgers paw be a full black with no detail on the fur but the style I had for the badger was quite soft unlike what they really look like which is rather sharp and edgy because of their sharp claws and slightly spiky fur.

With the font, I wanted to make it very clear and readable. So I chose ‘Times New Roman’ over the other fonts because using a clear font was more important than choosing one of the more artistic fonts like ‘Rosewood Std’ or ‘OCR A Std’. There wasn’t a time in the story, for any of the scenes or characters that was necessary for me to use fonts that would represent a character in a certain way. For instance, if I had a villain in the story I would have used a very edgy and almost spooky font. However the folktale ‘The Farmer and the Badger’ with my modifications didn’t have one and didn’t need one. There wasn’t even a hero in the story that needed a different kind of font than the other, keeping the text clear with the font choice was more important given that I didn’t need anything additional for specific characters.

Many children’s books use ‘Times New Roman’ as their font because of it’s so clear and easy to read. The text needed to be quite large and spaced out so that when children read it they can follow the words much easier than if the text was small and pressed close together. I kept my font size around 24pt to 30pt but I spaced it out by going clicking on ‘Character’ (which is the capital ‘A’ with the line on the side of it) and when the small menu came out I used the ‘Set the leading’ to space out the words next to each other and ‘Set the tracking for the selected characters’ to space out the lines of text above and beneath one another to make sure they aren’t close together so you don’t have trouble reading it.

Having the text was very important, especially with my target audience being so young and are learning to read more and more. If I had kept the font small and tightly enclosed together than it would have been to difficult to read. Not only because the words were pushed tightly together on the line but because the lines were to close above and beneath one another.

What signs, symbols or codes have your used in your work?Signs, symbols and codes are things that were unintentionally done when creating the images for my final product. However, when looking through them I saw that there were many throughout the majority of the pages. One of which was shown often at the beginning of the story on pages 1 and 2 with the badger thinking about the carrot. Because he is thinking about the carrot so much it could be an sign that the badger is greedy. On page 1 he’s just thinking about a single carrot and looking at the farmhouse crops. However this series of him thinking progress to the first image on the second page I had put love hearts around the carrot the badger was thinking of. This was a symbol of the badger was not only thinking about the carrot and wanting it but he loves and needs it. The addition of the love hearts shows the badger has a much stronger want for what he’sthinking about.

The second image on page 2 again shows the badger is thinking about the carrot he wants, but because I had put it on a plate with a knife and fork on either side showed that the badger was not only thinking and looking for the carrot but that he wanted to eat it too. Using a plate and cutlery is an western symbol for eating. You’ll often see them on road signs to show the driverthat there is somewhere to eat near-by, so having the item that the badger was thinking and wanting on a plate with cutlery showed his true intentions to why he was looking for the carrot. On page 3, the first image shows the farmers hand held up, palm showing and fingers upright, which is an indication that he is saying ‘stop’. Having someone’s hand held up is an internationally known signal used for authority, for instance someone's hand held up are on stops signs. Helping people to understand that they’re needed to stop. So having the farmer do this didn’t even require me having to put a speech bubble on the side for the farmer saying ‘Stop him!’ because this signal is so well known. The second image on page 3 shows that the farmer has captured the badger and put him in a sack.

I had put small curved lines (one on top of the other) around the top and sides of the sack to show there is rapid movement happening within that image because the badger is trying to escape. And on the final image on page 3 you see that the badger has been put in a cadge. Having the bars in front of the badgers face and around him overall shows that he is imprisoned and is now a captive, which is a drastic change from the first and second page of the story where he is running around the crops. Onmultiple pages (such as pages 3, 4, 5, 7 and 8) there are speech bubbles with either one or both of the symbols of a questionmark or an exclamation point. Having this in the images was because I was inspired by a graphic novel called ‘Owly’ which waspurely had the animals talking through images and symbols like question marks. This was a way of adding more detail to the image and explaining the text further. Having a question mark shows that there was questionings happening. For example on page 7 the rabbit has a speech bubble with a carrot and a question mark next to it. This is in reference to the text beneath theimage, ‘The rabbit bounced up and asked, “A carrot dear farmer?”’ And an exclamation point shows shock. For instance on page 3 when the badger has be locked up in the cadge there is a speech bubble with only an exclamation point in it showing that hehis shock and alarmed by the situation. I could have wrote ‘-gasp-’ but having an exclamation point was a much message than having ‘-gasp-’ written in the speech bubble.

With the farmer and his wife something that is a clear with them is who they are and what work they do. Even though in the text I have stated that the two people in the story are the farmer and the farmers wife you can see who they are because of how they are dressed and the way they look overall. Something that could be said is that because their clothing isn’t very extravagant and quite dull could be a sign of a lack of wealth, however they are wearing work clothes so that symbol may not be as obvious and necessary to others.

The way the farmer look physically is a much more prominent message than what clothes he is wearing. He’s slightly older, with grey hair and is shown outside a lot. Having him in a baggy dark jacket is more modern to the original folktale because he probably would have wore different clothing in 1906 for working outside. However with the farmers wife, because she is in a simple dress with a white apron on you can tell much quicker, especially for a child, to who she is and what work she does. It is a more stereotypical look for a woman to have but this was the only image of the farmers wife so the reference needed to made clear quickly. For a child they will see her clothing and assume that she is a mother, a more caring figure incomparison to the farmer because of how she looks. Because she’s inside she becomes more homely, meaning she will be more nurturing. This shows another code within her look, again stereotypical but even in the original tale it’s the farmers wife who gives in to the badger and sets him free.

This was unintentional for my rendition of the story but is shown in the text and images that the man (the farmer) is the onewho captures the badger and locks him up and then it is the woman (the farmers wife) who sets him free because of her loving nature. I had even said in the text that, ‘The farmers wife tried to ignore the badgers saddening pleas but good natured as she was she set him free’. The farmers wife, the woman, became a sign of being more nurturing towards emotions where as the farmer, the man, had the opposite effect and wanted to capture and most likely kill the badger because he was stealing from his crops. There were smaller signs and symbols on certain pages, for instance on page 6 the farmer is crying. You can tell that he is crying because of the way he is sat with his head in his hands but what makes it more obvious is that there are tear drops falling from his face. Tear drops aren’t usually identical and in perfect, they also aren’tbright blue but having them look like this is more universally known. It’s a much clearer depiction to have the tear drops look like this than having them be rounded and transparent.

Something that I could have done for additional symbolism with the colours that are in the images is with the atmospheres colour. Mainly with the sky. With the overall look and feel for the images I wanted them to be bright and warm, particularly with the backgrounds, for instance the sky being blue and hills being bright green with blue, yellow and white flowers. But when the story starts to takes a turn and becomes quite sad because the farmers crops have be ruined and he’s crying I could have made the background darker. The sky could have been bleak and clouds could have been grey, using the scenery to also convey the emotions of the characters on that particular page.

Using symbols such as love hearts around what the badger is thinking to show that he not only is thinking about and wants the carrot but that he also loves and needs it as well. As well as putting the carrot on a plate with cutlery on the side of it to symbolize that the badger wants to eat what he’s thinking about.

Using the universal sign of someone holding up their hand to indicate that the farmer is saying ‘Stop’. Someone holding up their hand like this is well known because it’s used on stops signs to tell pedestrians and drives to stop.

Small curved lines to show movement

Having speech bubbles with sighs such as question marks and exclamation points to illustrate that the character is asking a question or is expressing emotions like shock or surprise.

What representations can be found in your work?

Given that my story is based mainly around animals the background of their age, race, social group and religion didn’t seem to matter as much with them because their animals, that kind of information didn’t seem relevant or would hold any effect on the story overall. In the original tale there were only four characters, the rabbit, badger, the farmer and his wife. So any additional characters, even after modifying, wasn’t necessary. But when it came to gender, I wanted there to be an even number of male to female characters. From the original tale there were three characters who were male (the farmer, the badger and the rabbit) and the farmers wife was the only female (and wasn’t in the tale very long). So when changing the rabbit to be a female character wasn’t something that would inevitably change the stories plot line drastically because unless I were to use stereotypes for how men and woman are presented, nothing would have changed other than saying ‘her’ instead of ‘him’. What I mean by stereotypically representing women is that I had the rabbit go and find the badger to tell him off for is wrongs. This is very prominent in a tale which was based and written in 1908. In many stories back then women are presented as quiet and submissive, avoiding conflict overall (and even nowadays social norms tell woman to be this way) but this wasn’t something I thought was necessary. Stereotypes for either gender wasn’t needed for the plot in general because the moral is a message to anyone.

The two people shown in my work are shown as adults and are both workers. However the work they are both seen doing could be deemed as controversy due to the farmers wife wearing an apron. This could be deemed as sexist given that I’ve implied that the man is working outside whereas his wife is inside the kitchen wearing an apron. In the early 1900’s women, in which this story was published, were seen to be domestic. Their place was in the home rather than working outside of it. In the original tale the farmers wife is told to be old and tired while she works in the kitchen and then is used as a plot device because the badger kills her. I did keep her in the apron only to make her more recognisable as a farmers wife and to stick to how she was represented in the tale, I could have made her wear work clothes but I don’t think that in a children’s story it would have made as much sense visually than keeping her in an apron and dress. It is quite stereotypical to keep her in that specific look but it is also stereotypical to have the farmer himself be an older man.

As well as with the race of these characters, I made their skin be quite pick and tanned given that they’re workers and will be out in the sun all day. That is what came to mind with their look overall rather than their race. With the animals, their race didn’t matter because there was no need for them to have a certain type of race but a breed instead. Given that you don’t really see the either the farmer or the farmer wife’s face the matter of race didn’t seem to occur. There are a limited number of characters in this tale originally and I decided not to add anymore because it wasn’t needed so the only two races that would matter would be the farmerand his wife’s, whose faces you barely see.

There are no children in this tale. When modifying the tale I did consider making the story about a naughty little boy (the badger) who steals from the farmer and his wife, where in the end their daughter (the rabbit) tells him to go and apologise but when comparing the characters to having animals or a full cast of people I chose to keep them rabbit and the badger as people. There are multiple books where the animals are main characters and children tend to find it more fun and appealing when the characters areanimals because they take an interest in their look and how they act. There’s also that element of ‘can animals talk?’ When keeping the animals in the story and talking to the farmers it has children think there’s a possibility that animals could talk to them. Similar to the Disney film ‘Toy Story’ which had children believing that their toys could come to life and talk.

More the typical and traditional look for children’s book illustrations where the characters are a farmer and a farmers wife.

Having the skin type of the farmers be quite pink and tanned given that they both work outside. Their faces are covered, so their race overall isn’t an issue because you only ever see their bodies rather than their face and facial expressions

A way of showing social groups could be from their jobs, what they are wearing and the interior and exterior of the characters home. Although their clothes aren’t very reliant to tell you what social group they are in because they will be wearing working clothes which are necessary for their work, they wouldn’t be wearing extravagant clothing when they’re working because they’re wouldn’t be reasoning behind wearing a gown when working with gropes. You don’t see the interior of the farmhouse because the only page in which any of the characters are inside of their house is on page 4 with the badger and the farmers wife. However, page 4 was one of the pages that had the layout of three small images than one large image. With those smaller images they didn’t have a background because putting so much detail in such a small space would have cluttered, which would have distracted the viewer from what is actually happening in the image. So when it came to getting a look into what the farmers interior would like was limited because of my layout. If I were to give the farmer and his wife a social group it would most likely be a working class family because they’re both farmers who work from home.

Examples of children’s books (and illustrations) that show animals talking and interacting in a human way, such as walking on their hind legs and sitting at a table with people. Not only with one another but with people as well to build children’s imaginations with the concept that animals, like their pets, can talk and play like they would.

For example on page 8 I show the rabbit and the badger talking to one another and standing on their hind legs.

What style have you employed in your products?

There were many influences the inspired the layout and look for my final product. Whether that was for the visual aspects of the story or with the text. Something that I had done with the text in my final product was rhyming the lines. This idea came about when researching the different types of children’s books out there. There were modern authors like Dr Seuss who is well known for how he rhymes his text. Reading extracts of his books, such as ‘The Lorax’, gave me a better understanding on how I could write my own with and without the inclusion of dialogue. For instance in ‘The Lorax’ he would write ‘“Mister!” he said with a sawdusty sneeze, “I am the Lorax. I speak for the tree”’. The sentences were imaginative and had strange terms to describe what the characters and backgrounds were like. Such as saying the Lorax had a ‘sawdusty’ sneeze isn’t something that the majority of children would know and use to describe a certain sneeze. This gave me inspiration to expand on what I was saying rather than keeping it quite simple. For example on page 7 I said ‘The rabbit was shocked, struck with such high anger that she went off herself to find the thieving badger’.

Instead of keeping the words and sentences simple by saying things like ‘Hey diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle’. There is a rhyme to sentence like those, which research has shown to be good for children because when the words are similar it teaches children how to spell easier in the future because they only have to change one or a few letters when remember a word that rhymes. However I wanted to use more descriptive words rather than keeping majority of the words the same but changing one or two of the letters. This was also because in my proposal I said that my target audience was aged six to eight years, if my target audience was younger I would have gone with using more simplistic words that sound similar and have shorter sentences but because I made my target audience a bit older I felt as though I could use more descriptive wording.

Visually I was inspired mostly by the author and illustrator Beatrix Potter. This was because her illustrations were very realistic but she put her own twist on them by giving them more human qualities. By this I mean in the way her characters move, such as having them walk on their hind legs, also having them wear clothing and walk with a walking stick. This influenced my designs in some ways, such as having the rabbit and the badger stand on their hind legs on certain pages. For instance with page 7 on the first of the three images I had the rabbit stand on her hind legs rather than crotched down to show more of the characters detail (such as their arms and stomach) which was much more visible than having the rabbit crotched down. Also on page 8 both the badger and the rabbit were standing on their hind legs when talking with one another. Doing this gave the animals similar qualities that a human would have, but unlike with Beatrix Potters novels I had the animals talk and physically behave in the similar ways to how humans would do not only around animals but also around people as well.

Influences for the layout and the text for my final product came from author and illustrators such as Julia Donaldson/ Axel Scheffler (author and illustrator of ‘The Gruffalo’) and Dr Seuss. They way that the author and illustrator for ‘The Gruffalo’ spaced out their images around their text inspired me to do my layout in a similar way to fit all of my text on the page it was required and also have a page of illustrations to translate the text visually with multiple images rather than just having one. And with rhyming my text, authors like Dr Seuss influenced me to expand my text and the words I used rather than keeping it quite simple like they do in nursery rhymes. More of a story than a song.

Influences for the visual aspects for my final product wasn’t just for the layout of my pages but also for the characters. Beatrix Potter with her lifelike characters that share similar qualities in the way they move and speak to human inspired me to give similar feature to characters that were animals. Not going as far as giving them clothes and shoes but how the walk on their hind legs and can talk in people.

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

Something that influenced the look and style of my final product was a task during pre-production which was from our photo story. Reason being I had rotoscoped all of the images for that task and in comparison to the previous tasks we’d done. For instance the shape task and using Filter> Filter Gallery> Palette Knife or Watercolour to edit movie stills into looking more like a comic book by adjusting the ‘Number of levels’ or ‘Edge Simplicity’. Out of all of the tasks I much rather preferred rotoscoping as a method of working. This was because I wanted to put as much detail as I could, big and small, and I thought rotoscoping was the best method of achieving that for me personally. The style I had rotoscoped the characters in the photo story was something of a similar style I had done the people in my final product for the children’s story. I tried to make the images in my photo story realistic, particularly with the people, so I would add as much detail as possible with what the people were wearing, by adding shadowing and creases so that the images showed movement and depth.

This was something I ended up doing with the farmer and the farmers wife to give them more detail given that there wasn’t going to be much on their faces because I had their faces covered. The style of both the photo story characters in comparison to the people in my final product did end up looking rather similar. One of the main ways that the style of these characters was so similar was by having the people in my final product be slightly faceless. This could have come from when I had took features away from the characters faces in my photo story. The reason why I took the people’s eyes away in the photo story was because it was a murder mystery and when I had rotoscoped them with their eyes it made them too recognisable, especially with the murderer. Taking awaythe eyes kept the mystery of what the people really looked like, however with my final product I wanted to have the animals be more expressive than the people so I had only half their face shown (from the nose downwards).

The backgrounds of the images in the photo story were blank, just a block colour. Which is what I ended up doing with the pages that had the layout of three images in one page, with each of the three images I had kept the background a block colour so that the concentration was purely on the characters and what they were expressing rather than putting mass amounts of detail in such asmall space. With the photo story it was because I wanted the attention to be purely on the characters and what was happening inthe story (especially because the photo story was a murder mystery) but also wanting to keep this simplistic style to the images.

I think managing my time for production when planning worked out well with the making of my final product. Reason being that when I had done the test pages for pages 1 and 8. I had already made the background with the hills, the farmhouse and the clouds that was somewhat finished. Of course there wasn’t a massive amount of detail to it but adding more detail to the scenery andcharacters was one of the things I had planned to improve upon for my final product. Such as adding flowers on the hills to make the image for lively and eye catching, as well as putting more shadowing to the clouds and the hills so they weren’t too flat and bland. Even adding splintering and shadows on the fence so that it didn’t look 2D. So for the session 1 and session 2 I knew I would want to start with pages 1 and 8 because I had already made the background with their test pages and could use the layers from those test pages to use as a template for those final pages. I had also planned to use the more detailed backgrounds for pages 5 and 6 but there were modifications with them after using the same background on some of the pages. For example I needed to move the clouds around to make them seem as though they’re moving as time goes on. And changing perspective with page 6 because it was a different angle of the scenery. So I had made morehills in the background rather than only having three. Throughout the sessions I also planned to improve on the characters look after doing more research into how they could look more realistic. This did slow down my production slightly because I spent too long on finding and rotoscoping different angles. Week 2 was more difficult because I had spent the first week using already made characters from the development process but whathadn’t been done then was being made in that second week. Such as session 6 was where I needed to rotoscope the farmer crying. To do this I needed to find the right kind of image and make the image look how I was planning to have the farmer be. Such aschanging the style of his clothing from the image I was using as a template and even with the background. Because that was the page that I decided to use as another angle (the view from the front of the farmhouse) it took longer than planned and ended up working into session 7. Even though on my planning booklet I was hoping to get a page or two done a day, but I had made sure to say that if I hadn’t finished a page on one session as planned to carry on with that page in the next session just in case. As well as saying to move on to any other page if I finished the page planned for that session. For instance on session 2 I said that if I had finished page 2 in the planned time I should move onto page 3 so that no time was wasted during production and I could get the work done as soon as possible.

Using the test pages for final pages 1 and 8. The hills background and farmhouse was something that was used frequently on nearly half of the pages. Of course there was development with the background by adding shading and flowers to make the image more eye-catching overall. As well as the development of the characters look. Giving them different angles and more shape/ detail to make them look more realistic.

Historical and cultural context

How my work compares to work that has come before it is that it’s very colourful. With the majority of children's illustratednovels they keep them colourful so that they’re more eye catching and will appeal to children more. If the images are quite dark and undetailed children don’t appeal to it as much as having bright images with detail so that they can look at the pageand see what they can find. Books like ‘Where The Wild Things Are’ by Maurice Sendak has images that are bright in colour and are full of detail so that the viewers eyes move across the page and take in all the page has to offer. With my final product I tried to have as much detail, whether big or small, to be in the images to make them more fun for the viewer to look at. However, there is a children’s novel called ‘The Dark’ by Lemony Snicket which is about a young boy needing to go into the basement of his house. The illustrations are dark and the only light and colour within the images comes from the torch the main character is carrying. These images have more detail with lines, for instance with the floor boards and stair case and the colour is more muted but the effect that the illustrator (Jon Klassen) was going for was something more creepy because a common fear with children is the dark.

Illustrations like the ones in Lemony Snicket’s ‘The Dark’ were the kind that didn’t convey the look and style I was trying to achieve with my final product because, like the story, they give an air of creepiness where as I was trying to make the images and plotline more bright and happy.

‘Where The Wild Things Are’ have illustrations that are very detailed and has the viewer look around the page more because of the different patterns and smaller details such as the leaves and scales on the monsters. Something of which I wanted to have with my images so their more fun for the viewer, especially since my target audience is for children.

The original novel had very detailed images that were in black and white. The story and the illustrations from the original folktale are more for an adult audience so I needed to make the story and images much softer and happy to appropriate and appealing for a target audience of 6 to 8 years. A current product that exists is ‘I Want My Hat Back’ by Jon Klassen. The illustrations are very simplistic and don’t have any backgrounds. The detail is on the characters because what the viewer needed to look out for is the red pointed hat.

Of course my story doesn’t have as much detail as ‘Where The Wild Things Are’, it is a bit more on the simplistic side with certain pages. Such as the ones that have three images on one page because they don’t have a background and only show the characters and maybe another item, those pages in comparison to the pages with one image on the whole page. Page 4 has all of the characters but with the addition of a cell and a lock and key but page 7 only has the characters shown. Because those pages are more simplistic they are more in comparison to the illustrations of ‘Monkey and Me’ by Emily Grovett. There is a lot of detail on the characters but the backgrounds are just white walls and they’ll be white table cloths so that the characters and what ever they’re doing is bright and are colourful.

Books like ‘I Want My Hat Back’ compares to my work because of how they’ve kept the background of their images simple (just a block colour) and put all of the detail into the characters and sometimes having additional items. For example, on the page from ‘I Want My Hat Back’ the rabbit is sat amongst some plant and on page 2 the badger is stood on the farmers crops.