Graphic Narrative Evaluation

Does your final product reflect your original intentions?

My original intentions were to create the ugly duckling story as it had always been written, but while doing research I saw that there was so many copies of the book already and mine would just add to that list so I decided to make it different and change the ending while keeping parts of the main story in there to make sure I didn’t create a different story altogether. I think it was a good thing to do as I could create a story that no one else had done but still keeping it the traditional fairy tale it originally was. By keeping the main parts of the story the same as a traditional, already existing book I knew that people would enjoy because I looked at customer reviews of other ugly duckling books and they were positive and many said that they enjoy the story. After making the change to the story I had to then make additional changes throughout production, this means that my final product would not have been exactly how I had planned it too but the changes were not big enough for my flat plans and storyboard to not represent the work that I have done. I think that it was a good idea to change the ending as it made it creative and exciting but I also think that once I had planned out what I would do I should have kept it that way or thought about changing the story during planning as it would have not created any problems for me. I also ran into problems like pages would not match up so I had to change others or add/remove some which again meant that it would be different to my original ideas. I kept the style of my book the same because I had planned to make it have a cartoon look to it and after researching other styles I decided on a final style. I also planned to make my illustrations using shape task because I found that it looked well and would create the style I wanted best which is what I did in my final product. All the plans that I made for the production side of my work I kept the same but I changed the story.

How well have you constructed your images?

My images show a constant style throughout, I tried to go for a simple cartoon look with the images because when I was doing research I found many pictures of cartoon animals that all had a specific style that I wanted to use in my work. The style was very simplistic but it was still complex to do, I had to make sure that the characters were all perfect with correct sizes and shapes. I tried to make the backgrounds in the same style but have the detail that they needed. The textures that were in my work were created by shapes I made these were things like the waves in the water and the grass, I created these with shapes and I did not use any overlays for them. I didn’t use texture overlays because I wanted to create the book with the style I saw from my research, it used plain colors and I decided to make the colors I used mostly bright because also from research I found that all children’s books are brightly colored. I also did not any other things that would create textures like shadows as I wanted to keep the images having a very simple look, making them easy to see by not having too much on a page. I think that I constructed the images well as I went by my planning when making them and using existing images and books for inspiration for me to create them to a good standard. I think that I constructed my images well, they all follow the same style and they are clear with nice colours that work well.

How well have you used text to anchor your images

I made the text easy to read for children, by using a correct font, size and colour. I made the text a plain serif font as this made the letters understandable which is important in children's books. I made them black as my images were all made from bright colours and making it black would make it easy to read. I placed the text in places that would make it easy to read, this was places where they was no images, this was either the top or bottom of the page. I used images on the page and put the correct text that would show what was happening. I made sure the words I used were not to complicated as it was made for children to read and even if they get it read to them, they must be able to understand the story. I found a copy of the story that had been made into a play, this gave me different characters and a narrator so when doing the story boards and planning I could use the characters to decide on how to put them and I could use the narrators lines for the text as it will match the images. It made it easier to put the images and text together than using the original story as it would be too long. I then could then add parts to that story and remove any if I didn’t need it, it also made it very easy to put in any characters or take any out. I think that because I used that version of the story I managed to use the text well to anchor the images. I used a website that has many different fonts on to decide which I should use in my work, I found a few that I thought would look nice in my book but I then had to chose from those which would be easiest to read for a small child. I found some fonts that would be to complicated to have in the book because they were very fancy and would maybe be suitable for the front page but not the whole story. I found out that most books have a serif font because the text is clearer but I found a children’s book that had a sans serif font and I liked the look of it as it followed the style I wanted to go for in my book but in the end I decided on a serif font as it was easier to understand.

Is your product suitable for your audience?

I think that my product is suitable for my audience because I have made sure that the images were simple and easy for someone to recognise what they are, I also made the text relevant to what was on the page in case the images are not understandable. I made sure that the text was suitable by concentrating on the size, text and colour and using already existing books for ideas. The story has an overall meaning to it which is to treat people fairly even if they are different which is something people should be taught but it does not have any other meanings or hidden messages because I think that young children would not understand or recognise them. I had to make sure that I made everything clear and simple, with small amounts of detail because when doing my research I found that the other books were like this, they had lots of colour and little detail so that is how planned my book to be. I did not use the original story in planning as my original script because it is very long and I didn’t want to re-writing it all so I found a version that had been made into a play, this was useful because I could use the narrators lines for the main story and the characters lines in speech bubbles on the pages. It was also a play made for young children so it had easy to read words and it made it perfect for me to use in my book. Overall I think that my book is suitable for the chosen audience because I researched well what I should use and made sure I used the right things.

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

I like the way that I created the images for my book. After practicing all the techniques that I could have used in production, (photography, rotoscoping, illustration and shape task) I decided that I liked the way that using shape task looked. I used shape task to then create the images by placing the shape over the top of the image and using the warp tool to then shape it into a shape similar to the image for a base then I would sue the tools to create the shape I wanted. I am glad that I picked shape task because I think my final product looks good with it. I did find it hard to make the backgrounds with shape task and it was also hard to do small detail with but I think that it would give me the best final product out of the methods. I could change a shape if I needed to and it would because of the method I was using. I also could layer things to create a better look but this meant that I had lots of layers and it was hard to change something as I didn’t know which layer it was, to overcome this I renamed the layers. I could also merge the layers into one if they were the same colour but if I did this I could not then un-merge them after that meaning if I needed to change anything later on when I couldn’t undo, I would have to re-do all those parts. I liked that I made all the characters first then did the backgrounds then put them together afterwards, this was helpful because I knew what I had done and what I needed to do and it was easy to keep organised. My characters did not need their facial expressions to change throughout the book so I didn’t need to worry about making different copies of a character with a different look. This made it easier to keep organised and I also would find it hard to make my characters show different emotions because they are animals so instead of using the images to show the characters emotions I put it in the story.

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

There was lots of space on the page that didn’t have anything on it so I could have made the page size smaller, made the text larger or I could have split the text up so it was spread out. My images turned out really neat and the colours of them worked well. Because of the style that I used the book has a nice simplistic look to it and it doesn’t have too much detail that would make the pages look full or crowded even if I did make the pages smaller. I think that I could have added more detail in to the story and I could have added more pages, although this may have taken too much time. I like that all the pages followed the same style and none of them looked different and the characters followed that style too. I like the colours I used because they were bright and looked good with it being a children’s book. I chose a serif font because I thought it would be easier to read but I wanted to use a sans serif font as it looked better and I think that I should have gone for that font as it would have improved the look of the pages. I also like that I used the shape task for my production method because I think that it would give me the best outcome. I like the style that I created by using it, I think that it is similar to the rest but has its own look to it.

Why did you include the content you used?

I used the content I did because I had to make the book for a child, I had to make sure that all the text and images were right for a children’s book. I researched many already existing children’s books to see what they were like, this gave me an idea of what to do in my book; I got ideas for the images, font, text and styles for my final product, I did this because these books were popular which means people like these aspects of them making mine fit in with them. When looking for a copy of the story I found a copy that was written for children doing a play because the original was very long and detailed but I wanted mine to be short and simple. I included the content that I used because it was all from ideas from research on popular children's books, using popular work for ideas is better because it gives you an idea on what people like and what parents want their children to see. I had to make sure that it was all suitable for a young child and didn’t include anything complicated and hard for a young child to understand.

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

I did not use anything in the story to create any extra meanings because the book is for young children and I do not think that they would understand them. I kept the story simple and made sure this way it would be easy to read and follow. Although I have not used anything like colours or animals to create another meaning, there is a moral behind the story. I think that having a moral in children’s books is good because its better to teach them when they are young. The story shows the animals disliking another because it is different and I think that shows the children that it is wrong to judge people based on their looks. I have not used colours to show anything like emotions in my book because in my research I found out that children's books are all brightly coloured. Using signs, symbols and codes in children’s books is not common, they usually follow a simple storyline and have no different meanings for things.

What representations can be found in your work?

My book does not show any particular group of people being represented in any way. Gender is not really mentioned in the story and where it is, it doesn’t become of importance. The point of the story is to show how one set of people showing negativity towards another because of how he is, is bad. I think that this represents how people can act towards one another in different groups such as gender, race and religion. When researching children’s books I found that they would generally use stereotypes these could be for gender for example. They will use a general picture of what most people think of when mentioning a group of people. They do not do this in a negative way but just to make the children understand what types of people there are.

What style have you employed in your products?

I have used a simple style that uses lots of colour and little detail. I found this style when looking for character inspiration, I came across some pictures of birds that used a style that I thought I could create with Photoshop using shape task which was why it was my chosen production method. I used this idea to find other characters that used a similar style and I managed to find an image for each character and other things that I would need like the barn. I used my children’s book research to find out if the style I had chosen was common in other books or not and I found that a lot of books use simple styles and plain images with little detail so I decided it was a good style to choose. I found that a lot of old books had more detailed images that were usually illustrations drawn by someone but I found very few recent ones like that. I used bright colours as there is no small detail, this was common in other children’s books too because children mainly look at the pictures more than the text so they have to be bright and appealing for them. I also found a book during research that had very simple illustrations that had been done using Photoshop, they were made up of few smaller shapes to create the main one, or even just one shape. Each page had only a small amount of writing on and because my story is short I decided to use a similar layout but I changed the font. I changed the font so my book looked different and it would be easier to read as many books use a serif font but that book used a sans serif font.

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

I used Photoshop to create my work and I used it well to create a good final product. I used the method that I found looked the best as I wanted the final work to look good but that meant that it wouldn’t have been the easiest one to do, it was quite a complicated method to use but I think that I managed to work it out and create the book to the best quality I could. I think that I have been very creative throughout the project because I made changes to a story so it wasn’t the same as another and I also used pre-existing books to create a style for my own work. I changed the story during production and after planning so I had to go back and redo my planning and change the pages I had made. My most creative aspect of the project was coming up with a different ending to the story because I could change it in so many ways like changing the animals to humans. I think that a weakness in my planning was trying to decide on which style and font to use as there was so many different ones I liked and so many different ones that the other books use, this was also good because I had a large range to choose from. I made a schedule so I knew what I was doing well and made sure that I was organised. I was always in front of my schedule which meant that I could get more of my book and checking done, this was a good thing because I knew that I would get it finished but this did mean that I would have time at the end in which I had nothing to do after improving and checking. If I was to do the project again I would take my time and make sure that I spend a lot more time in production and going through things thoroughly to make sure everything is done properly.

Historical and cultural context

The story is originally an old traditional folk tale written in 1843 and it was published in a book of new fairy tales in 1844. The copy that I had found was a modern take on the original, made into a play for young children. This meant that the words were easier for children to understand and it was easy to follow. The story was illustrated with hand drawn images which is common for books published that long ago. The writer stated that it was not originally for children but more of an autobiography. Over time it has developed into books, films and other types of media for children by many different people which is why there are so many different versions of it. There is many new copies of the story with some having the same plot and some having a different one. I found that a lot of the re-written ugly duckling books have changed what animal he is so I thought that I should use that in my work because of it being so popular, another way of changing it that I found to be popular was changing the ending, stories that change the ending usually keep it a happy ending like most children’s books do. Comparing my version of the story to the original, mine is much shorter and it has a lot less detail in it. The original has the ugly duckling visiting many places in which he is teased then he leaves but I decided to shorten the story. I did this because I planned my book to be for young children meaning it has to be easy to both understand and read, the original gives lots of description of each character and it sets the scene in high detail, I did this in my images instead of in the story. Another difference is that I use images created in Photoshop whereas the original images were hand illustrated which is more common in old children’s books. I found that most children’s books that have been recently made are illustrated with simple images, this can be ones that have been hand drawn but they’re mostly made in Photoshop.