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?

• Compare your planning/digital flat plans/ storyboards to your final product

• In my planning I said that my story would be 10 A3 pages and also that the scenes would be comic book with the characters being rotoscope. The final product is A3 but the book is actually 11 pages instead of 10, both the scene and characters are rotoscope. My storyboard/digital flat plan consists of 11 pages with the text underneath the scene. The final product consists of 11 pages however the text is in with the images instead of underneath/to the side.

How well have you constructed your images?

• How well have you constructed your images? You could talk about the overall visual appearance and well as the use of texture and colour.

• To produce my images I had to go and find some suitable photos of people for each character. What I then had to do was rotoscope each image to give them all a cartoon like effect. The tones and colours do generally mix quite well but the main area to improve is definitely the inconsistency of character size as in some scenes characters appear to be smaller than in others.

Here is what I mean in size inconsistency. Little Red Riding Hood seems to vary in size as does the wolf in each image

How well have you used text to anchor your images

• In my book I have chosen to change the position of the text depending on the page. It is all at the top of the page but it varies between right, left and centre. The text is generally quite short. I believe that because the text is rather short and very simple, it will be suitable for children.

This page is an example of short and simple text

Is your product suitable for your audience?

• Reference your proposal. • Give an audience profile and describe suitability in

reference to content• In my proposal I stated that my audience would be

“young children of both genders who are English speakers (aged 4-7) who are interested in outside life” I feel as though my final product matches what I said my target audience would be. I feel thus because the majority of the story is set outdoors and also because there is a mix of both male and female characters. The storyline is very simple which is easy for young people to follow.

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

• The main technique I used was rotoscoping. To perform rotoscope I had to go round my person/object with the polygonal lasso tool. What I like about this technique is that it is very accurate. I also like the way it allows me to turn a real picture into a cartoon. However if you do something with the lasso tool by accident it is not easy to undo but can sometimes it can result in you having to lasso what you wanted to cut out all over again.

• In order to make my images cartoon like I had to double click on the layer, double click colour range then click on the colour of Red Riding Hood’s dress (as an example) to create the cartoon version of the dress. For the woodcutter I used Ron Burgundy so in order to make him look like a woodcutter I had to change the colour of his clothes. The only backdrop is that certain parts of each character’s clothes my be a different shade of a colour on one part of the clothing.

This is an example of rotoscope. As you can see the colour on one side of the basket is much different to the other.

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

• The main strengths of my final product is the quality of the indoor scenery. I think this was always going to have an advantage over outdoors as the colours will be artificial whereas outdoors will be natural therefore it is easier to replicate in rotoscope style. Another positive of my work is the quality of my Red Riding Hood and the Grandma. I feel as though these were the more successful characters I managed to rotoscope. I felt as though these were the easiest characters to make as there was not that much editing I actually had to make to them.

• However there are some negatives to my final product. I feel as though the Mother could have been rotoscoped a little better. Instead of making her two separate legs, I made just the one and merged the feet layer and the leg layer together then copied it so that both legs looked the same. I also feel as though I could have found a better picture for the wolf as I had some issues trying add some legs and a tail. There were also some issues with making the wolf’s teeth as it was very tricky to find a picture of a wolf showing its teeth then transferring the teeth over to my wolf. Another room for improvement is the overall quality of my woods. There is an awful lot of green in my woods but very little sky.

Here we see the difference in quality between my indoor scenes and my outdoor scenes. I am not very happy about my woods as it looks like there is a small bit of sky randomly placed in the centre of the page when it should go all the way to the end of the woods to create contrast. I think the main strength of the inside scene is that there are no real gaps and everything looks the way it should.

Why did you include the content you used?

• Images, fonts, effects, colours• I feel as though the images I have chosen were appropriate because they all do represent what you

would expect each character to look like in a children’s book. For my woodcutter I used a picture of Ron Burgundy, I feel he was a good choice to use as he has the hair colour and the facial features that you would expect a woodcutter to have. Before I started the final product I produced a practice page in which I produced Red Riding Hood and the wolf. When I started my actual project I realised I needed to produce 3 more characters to tell my story effectively. I made the mother before I started the project as she would appear in the first two pages, then I made the woodcutter and the Grandma as I approached the ending to the story.

• I had decided to use a very basic font (the geneva CY) with a very basic colour because the book was aimed at 4-7 year olds therefore it has to be easier for them to read. This would be a sans serif font as there are no extra parts to any letter.

• In my main production there was not really any effects used. This is because I preferred to rotoscope my work

• The reason why I chose the colours in my book was because I wanted the book to be as realistic as possible therefore I used the colours that would normally be used. In some of the children’s books I had read in my research there was no unusual colours. I think it is important to keep the colours realistic so that children can learn about real life and also have fun reading at the same time.

Here is my Geneva CY font, it is very basic and also very easy to read

I have used very natural coloursfor my tree and pavement.

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

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

• To show that my wolf is the villain, I have made him show his teeth when Little Red Riding Hood realises that it is the wolf in Grandma’s bed instead of Grandma.

• Nothing bad actually happens at the end of my story, whereas in other Red Riding Hood books the wolf eats Grandma and she’s gone, in others the woodcutter kills the wolf but Grandma is saved. What I have done differently is I have made it so the wolf eats grandma but grandma is still alive and when the Woodcutter hits the wolf Grandma is saved and the wolf runs away. This is ensure that the tone is not in any way frightening to children.

Although the villain in the book is the wolf he isn’t made to look that scary and the text is not particularly intimidating either.

What representations can be found in your work?

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

• In my story it is the woodcutter who steps in at the end of the story to save the day. The woodcutter is a man. This gives you the impression that it is always down to a man to step in and solve the problem and makes women seem weak and defenceless. This is typical of Children’s stories because in books with Princess’ in it is always down to the Prince to slay the dragon and rescue her.

• The mother in the book seems to be in a shouting position whilst talking to Red Riding Hood. This makes people who are mothers seem very stern and always looking to dictate the situation.

• There are a range of different ages in my story. Little Red Riding Hood does not follow her mother’s rules which makes young children seem disobedient.

• I feel as though there is not a lack of any type of character therefore there is no real representation in that respect.

Here we have the opening page. This is what I mean when I say mother’s are represented as bossy. Little Red Riding Hood when she says “yes I know mother” could be seen as cocky and slightly ignorant.

What style have you employed in your products?

• Discuss influences/ existing products• What visual style does your work have and why did you choose it?• Before I started my final product I had to do some research on

other Children’s stories. The main influence for where I would put my text was “The Tiger Who Came To Tea” in this book the text is in with the image and where it goes on the page varies. That book is also done in cartoon style which was an influence to my work.

• My work is done in rotoscope form to give it that cartoon type of effect. There are no curves or shadows in my work it has a very angular style. The colours I have used are the colours you would normally expect on Little Red Riding Hood, the woods and in the two houses. I chose to use the rotoscope style on my work because I believe that rotoscoping is the best way and is a lot less time consuming.

The similarities between my influence book and my book is that the text is on the same page as the image. It is also similar because both bits of scenery are very realistic. The difference is the existing product looks as though it has been illustrated whereas my book has clearly been done on Adobe Photoshop.

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

• How did the planning and research help. I think it was a smart idea to have a plan because it gave me a guide to what I needed to do and when. I think research into existing products also helped me out as well because they gave me a lot of influence as to how I was going to structure my own work.

• How well did you manage your time. I feel as though I managed my time rather well. I was given a deadline day in which to complete my work. My personal target was to do at least 1 page a day, it then became apparent that some pages had more work that needed doing on them than others, for example there were some pages where the same scene is used whereas others the scene only appears once.

• The main weakness in my planning is my mood board. I think I could have put a few more images on there and less text in order to make it look a better quality of mood board.

• However I feel as though my proposal is very much the main strength of my work. It specifies exactly what I was planning to do in my product in a reasonable amount of detail. I also feel as though it makes good sense.

Historical and cultural context

• How does your work compare to what has come before? What other similar products have existed in the past? What current products exist?

• The original story was told by French peasants in the 10th century with the first publication being in 1881. In my story there are no deaths in my story but in other versions there could be somebody dying as in times gone by people weren’t as afraid to make children feel scared.

• The difference between my work and the other work is that my work is done in rotoscope form whereas the other examples are done differently. My work is done in rotoscope while others look like they have been hand drawn. The top right image has also been done with a bit of water colour, I think all the other versions are hand drawn because hand drawings are traditional as is Little Red Riding Hood. The detail on my work is very basic compared with the detail on real examples, the illustrations on other pieces of work are very complicated whereas my illustrations were rather simple. The examples all keep the same colour text throughout whereas mine changes for the last page. This is because the image colour on my final page is too dark to use black text. In the examples the authors have designed text boxes to keep the colour of text consistent. This is because the background of each text box is white so it does not matter if the illustration uses dark colours. The top right version is more cartoony and more child friendly, it is very contemporary whereas the bottom 2 are very traditional and old fashioned. My version is very modern and contemporary. It was all my idea to make an up to date version, you can tell this because in one of my illustrations there is a TV in the corner.

• The similarities are that my book and the other book examples combine text with image on the same page.

This version is very modern. It was released in January of 2002.

This version is very traditional. It was released on 1st October 2007.

This is a very old version. It was released in the late 1800s.

This is my version. It was made in rotoscope form in December 2014.

Peer Feedback

• Summarise peer feedback and discuss

– Responses you agree with

– Responses you disagree with