Task 1- Propp’s theory of characters and functions.

Evaluation

Vladimir Prop who was a Russian and soviet formalist who founded the Propp’s theory. This theory consists of there being a conclusion of 31 elements of plot types and 8 character types that are involved with most stories. The 8 character types are Villain, hero, helper, princess/prize, her farther, the donor, the false hero and the dispatcher.

Applying this theory to my graphic narrative of a children’s story it uses some of these 8 character types. The hero- the hero in my story is the prince. The prince saves Rapunzel and kills the Witch. The prince also plays the part of the Witch’s victim as she tries to trick him into thinking its Rapunzel so she can destroy him. The princess/prize- this character type is linked to Rapunzel she is the princess who gets saved from the tower by the hero. Villain- the villain is the witch in my children’s story she is the one who is betrayed as morally bad due to locking Rapunzel in a tower. She is against the hero (the prince) and she prevents the hero by reaching their goal (saving the princess) she puts the hero off track to get the princess.

These characters in my story present three of the eight character types that are in the Propp’s theory. These conclude that my story uses mostly three main ones

The other five character types include…The Donor- gives the hero something special like a magical weapon or information that helps them complete their quest. Example= Turtle off finding nemo. Helper – support the hero, not as well as the hero, sidekick of their quest. Supplies support for the hero. Example = Donkey- ShrekThe princess’ farther- gives the hero the task. Not a very popular character type in modernised stories. It is a tricky character to find in stories. Example= Fiona’s Farther- ShrekThe false hero- mistaken for the hero, steals the heroes thunder, tries to grab the credit, and may want the princess/prize. Example= prince charming Shrek.

The Dispatcher – sends the hero on the mission, family member usually. The dispatcher may be combined with another role. Example= Lord Fardquaad- Shrek

These character types do not fit into my story and I have two extra characters the Husband and wife which are Rapunzel parents but they do not involve any of these roles therefore they do not have a category to fall into.

The Propp’s functions are the 31 elements that Prop consisted that are in a story. My graphic narrative includes some of these functions that make up the story. The functions that this includes are…Reconnaissance- the Villain seeks something. In my children’s story the villain seeks the prince visiting Rapunzel in the tower. Delivery- when the villain gains information. The villain gains the information that the hero (prince) is visiting Rapunzel everyday in the tower. Trickery- the villain tries to deceive victim. The witch tries deliberately to make the prince believe he is climbing Rapunzel hair when actually the hair is not with Rapunzel but with the witch. The victim at this point of the story is the hero who is in a vulnerable place. Mediation- hero discovers the lack. The Prince discovers that it’s not actually Rapunzel but the Witch pretending to be Rapunzel. Beginning counter- action- the hero chooses a positive action- the action the prince chooses is to push the Witch out of the window. Then Rapunzel is free from the Witch as the Witch is then gone. Departure- the hero goes on the mission. The Prince goes and tries to find Rapunzel to bring her back to the kingdom and save her. Guidance- The hero reaches the destination. The prince reaches the woods and finds Rapunzel. Rescue- The pursuit ends. The search for Rapunzel ends and he saves Rapunzel and goes back to the kingdom. Wedding- the hero marries and ascends the throne. The Prince takes Rapunzel back to the kingdom where they get marries and live happily ever after. In conclusion my story uses nine functions out of the thirty-one elements of the Propp’s theory. The functions are used mostly towards the end of my story, as the start of the story does not include much action.

The equilibrium, Disequilibrium and New equilibrium is a theory by Todorov. The theory is that all narratives follow the same path. There are 3-5 step versions of this idea.

Equilibrium- this is where the story starts. The normal everyday occurrences and day-to-day activities that the character get ups to. This part is before the action starts and everything is still in normality before it goes wrong.

Disequilibrium- this is where the story really starts. An event happens which disrupts the life of our characters. This is different than the normal day-to-day life, which causes havoc, and causes the character/s have a reaction to the event. It is suppose to throw the character off track.

New equilibrium- the end of the story, things go back to normal or some kind of normality. May be a new version of normal. Things will then continue normal. Applying these steps to my work… Equilibrium- The start is where the husband and wife live in a kingdom and the wife is expecting her first-born child and she wants to eat the rampion. Disequilibrium- this part in the story is when the Husband gets caught by the witch and has to give the witch their first-born child. This something that disrupts their lives and causes havoc in which leads on the rest of the story. The character of Rapunzel is thrown of track as she grows up witch the Witch leading her to be locked away in the tower.

New equilibrium- Is when the prince finds Rapunzel and takes her back to the kingdom where they get married everything is back to normal and there is normality through their lives.

Binary opposition Claude Levi Strauss, a French theorist, came up with the idea of binary opposition. The idea is that there can only be a story when two opposing sides come together. The conflicts between these two sides are what drive the story. In my graphic narrative of a children’s story the two opposite sides of the story that come together and Good Vs Evil. The Evil side comes from the Witch. Then the good side comes from the Prince and

Rapunzel. There is a constant trend of heroes and villains throughout the story which links with the binary opposition of good vs. evil.

Task 2 – Types of structures.

There are opposite types of structures that can be applied to work.

Open- open narratives do not reach a conclusion. They go on and on. Soaps and comic books are good examples because they run from episode to episode.

Close- close narrative is when there is a conclusion and the narrative reaches the end with media text. The story starts and finishes within about 90 minutes or more.

Single strand – A single strand narrative has just one storyline. Children’s books often have a single strand narrative as they struggle to cope with more than that.

Multi-strand – A multi-strand narrative has many different storylines. Again, a soap opera is a good example of this as it features lots of storylines about lots of characters.

Linear – Linear narratives start at the beginning and go straight through the story to the end. All the events happen in order. Each step of the story follows the next. It’s a simple but popular method of storytelling. Films, books and journalism often use a linear narrative. Non-linear – Non-linear narratives don’t go through the story in a straight line. They may use flash backs and flash-forwards to jump around in time.

Realist – Realist narratives reflection ‘real life’. They are believable events that could happen to almost anyone. Realist narratives are interested in the day-to-day reality of people lives.

Anti-realist – The opposite of realist narratives. They involve events, characters and locations, which are highly unlikely if not impossible to find in real life.

Following these types of structure my graphic narratives follows the structure of a Close narrative. It reaches an end ‘Happily Ever After’ and there is a conclusion that good won and defeated the evil. There is a beginning at the book then a finish at the end. Considering my story is a children’s book it obviously follows the structure of the single-strand narrative. The story is one story and does not have multi storylines combined in one story. It’s aimed at children and as children may struggle to keep up with multiple stories lines that’s why it’s a single strand as it consists of one story which is easy for children to follow. It’s a linear story, which links to it being a closed story. It starts at the beginning and goes straight through to the end. Each step of my story follows the next step. This has an anti -realist structure because it’s an fantasy story it does not reflect to real life events and it is a story tale which is a made up story regarding the beginning text ‘Once upon a time in a kingdom far away’ The Witch character in my story is not realist and the climbing of a girl with very long hair is not realist as that would be impossible for that to happen.

Task 3- Evaluating concepts

Image Construction- In my graphic novel I chose to use the method of illustration to make my work authentic and traditional as possible for a children’s fairytale story. I chose to draw at my images so to construct I used coloured pencils and paper then uploaded them onto the computer. The overall visual appearance of my images wasn’t up to the standard that I wanted. My method involved having skill so I had to try my best to make my images as good as possible to make them of a high quality. I used bright colours to attract young children and make the book colourful and have a positive aspect instead of it being dark and not appropriate for young children. . I also used photography in my images for the backgrounds. I took the Photos myself then I used the filter gallery to put a filter on the photography and changed the effect to make it look like it had been drawn. I used the coloured pencil effect as that linked with my drawn images and made the photos I took of hills and woods look drawn rather than an actual picture. I used the contrast and brightness to change the look of the image and make it be brighter and be bolder on my page. The quality did not look that professional because I hand drew them but

they work well the concept of the children’s book being a traditional and vintage fairytale.

Anchorage. The text I used anchored my images as I used a combination of words that you would see in a traditional fairytale such as ‘Kingdom’, ‘Once upon a time’ and ‘Happily ever after’ these words anchored the images by showing the traditional values of my work. I place the images next to the appropriate piece of writing that explained that picture for example on the first page the first image of the kingdom is next to fist piece of text about there being a kingdom far away. I placed the images and text like this to make it easy for children to understand and follow the story through the text and pictures. The text gives the image content. Without the images we wouldn’t know what was going in the story and we wouldn’t know what the pictures meant. For example on page four. The prince in the bottom text I placed the text on plain backgrounds to make it easy to read. This is also appeal to children so they can read it clearly.

Signification. I used symbolic elements in my work and signs that represent things. These show extra meaning to my work. On page t here I have the Witch and Rapunzel. The Witch is a lot darker in brightness and contrast that Rapunzel this shows that the Witch is more evil than Rapunzel and that she is a bad character. The brightness of Rapunzel shows her good natured and her angelic aspect. The Witch is wearing black this has properties of death and evil. This shows that the Witch is a morally bad character in the book and she is the character type of a villain. Rapunzel is wearing a red and green dress. I chose these colours because red has connotations of love, desire and passion. Rapunzel has these qualities of her because as soon as the prince sees her he falls instantly in love with her, also she forever wants the desire to be saved from the tower and she’s very passionate about the prince. These qualities make her even more of an angelic positive character and link her to the character type of the princess who needs to be saved. The green indicates harmony, fertility, nature this shows that the princes is in the middle

They are linked together in the same area

of the woods surrounded by nature and she is a girl who wants to live in harmony and that is t be saved from the Witch. I chose to put the Prince in purple because this symbolizes power and royalty, which for the prince it shows that he is the hero and he saves the day and indicates the traditional story of the prince saving the princess. I crated the background of Rapunzel quite dark and made Rapunzel bright this is so she stands out and she looks like she is not supposed to be there and she’s surrounding by evilness.

Representation. My work represents the group of genders very strong throughout the story. It represents Males as being strong and powerful and females are portrayed as weak as and less significant than the male. The prince is the one who is the hero and he saves Rapunzel and defeats the Witch. Then Rapunzel never tries to defend herself and lets the prince rescue her, which represents her as a gender that she is powerless and vulnerable. My graphic narrative represents the religion of Witchcraft and paganism as evil and bad. Most of traditional fairytales such as sleeping beauty and snow white include the religion in which is portrayed in evil way. This is because when the fairytale was written in the time period they saw ‘Witches’ as evil women who were Satan worshipers. Paganism is show in a negative way this is because the Witch is the villain who locks Rapunzel in the tower and tries to kill the prince. In snow white the witch is also portrayed as the evil villain who tries to kill Snow white. Women in this book are portrayed as negative and helpless as they are weak or evil. Men in this book are portrayed as masculine and positive. I wanted to keep the book very traditional authentic so I kept the roles like they are to show the traditional values, because of the time period of it being written that is why men are seen as more significant than women and Witches are seen as evil.

Historical and cultural context. The story Rapunzel has many different versions of it. There are dark versions and happier versions. The story varies over many counties, which have different titles and different kinds of story lines but still have a beautiful girl trapped in the tower. For example, an Italian folk’s tales of Rapunzel includes a beautiful girl being trapped in the tower but the Witch is her stepmother who is jealous. This follows the same main characters but parts of the story are changed. As there is a different version of the story that varies I changed my ending to make it a lot more child friendly. I made the prince defeat the Witch and they live happily

ever after to show the heroic features of a prince character. Comparing this with the original version the Witch defeats the prince and he is blinded and it takes him years to find Rapunzel. This was the original Brothers Grimm version published in 1812. The story tale has also got many film versions of it. In 2010 Disney released an animated version called ‘Tangled’ this version is a very updated version to our society as it takes our current society views on women being equal to men and this version shows this by Rapunzel not being such a vulnerable and helpless character and she’s very independent. It still follows some original features like a Prince the tower and the long hair. But as integrated with modern aspects to update the way the story is represented. The story is set in Germany, as it is a Germanic folk tale. This is why it mentions a lot of castles and towers and woods. Fairytales such as snow white and sleeping beauty also include castles and deep dark woods to. It’s a convention of a classic traditional fairytale because of the period it was written in.

Production processes. My work is spread over a horizontal page and I have placed two pieces of text and two images to go with the text on each page this made my story shorter in pages. This worked well as it made my story flow together better. My work was quite difficult to get it the way that I wanted it was hard to find the right effects and the method I chose was quite difficult as it involved being skilled in that area. I tried my best when drawing out the pictures but the look I was going for included traditional images.Technically my work worked well. It wasn’t hard to put it together on the computer and I was able to design the images with filters and effects to make them to how I wanted. I used Photoshop to create my work which was good as I could warp images and customise the sizes and layout in a very easy way to create an authentic look.

This is the 2010 Disney film. As you can see it’s very different from the traditional version as Rapunzel is at the front look fearless and brave and not vulnerable and weak. The roles have changed round and the prince is the one that looks helpless and weak holding a ‘frying pan’ this makes him humorous.

I was quite creative with my work and wanted it to be in cloud like format by using a rubber to rub around the edges to not give it that harsh line between the page and the image so I blended the image the background and let it fade out. I did it in a messy way to reflect on Children having a crazy imagine. Which fairy tales are all about? They allow children to have a fantasy imagination. I haven’t done very noticeable creative aspects of my work as I wanted a traditional story with authentic images. If I was to do this project again I would be a lot more imaginative with my story and change it to another version and be wild with my images. I would change the way I did it and do it a lot darker version and change it into a graphic novel. This would be very interesting and a more original as it’s a idea which hasn’t be explored that much after researching the different versions online.My time management went really well I was able to finish with plenty of time to make sure my work was perfect and I went over and checked spelling and grammar. I stuck to my schedule and it was really useful as everyday it showed me what I needed to achieve on that day and what I needed to get up to. I managed to stick to the schedule by making sure I did everything from AM to PM right from the beginning. I made sure at the end of each day I had completed all the tasks I has set myself that day. This allowed me to have a lot of time at the end to make sure I had done a good job.