Evaluation

My project has changed dramatically since I started. It has been a long, and at times incredibly tough, project that I think has really challenged me but I am pleased with my finished work. 

Looking at my finished book there are a few things I would like to adjust, but overall I am incredibly pleased with it, and excited for where it might take me next. 

I do want to change the font slightly, although I like it being collaged I do think that I should have a mix of uppercase and lower case letters and a question mark on the title and second page. I chose my font because of how it looked on the page, however I didn't take into account that the age group I am targeting my book towards are just starting to learn to read, and therefore correct use of punctuation and capital letters are an important thing to teach them.

I also wish that I had given myself more time at the end of the project to bind my full-sized book. I had my mini books printed in plenty of time, however once these were done the majority of my time was spend concentrating on my other projects, and I did not allocate enough time to get my A4 book bound to a standard that I am happy with. I can, and will, re-print and bind my book full size giving more time and thought to the process, but I am disappointed that I didn't get a full sized copy that is a quality I am happy with in time for the end of my project.

The most challenging part of this project was putting all the different parts together to create a final image for each page. I have always concentrated on the character and/or main focus of the page in other projects, and I really struggle to create suitable backgrounds for them. The style I used for my book is fairly new to me. Although I have been collaging characters for a while, the technique of collaging painted paper for a background is something I only really started doing for my Olio project just before christmas, however I really enjoyed working this way and it is something I will continue to do. 

When I was planning out my pages I really struggled to imagine what the finished page would look like using this technique, and so I did need to experiment with it a little first. Once I had a few pages finished I found this much easier, and the design of my book came together quickly after this point.

Overall I am really pleased with how this project has turned out. It is nothing like I had imagined at the beginning, but I have developed a new style of working that I think suits my work well, and have also got some really positive feedback from some publishing companies. 

I will continue to adapt the book a little now the project has finished, and I will also try to make and bind a better quality copy, but I am really pleased with how my book has turned out at the end.

I think that despite the struggles and challenges I have an end product that I am pleased with.

London Book Fair

I had always planned to take my book to London Book Fair at the end of the project, however the books I had printed cost a bit too much to just give away for free so in the end I took two copies with me: one for the stall, one to take around with me to show with my portfolio.

I also took a selection of business cards, mini cards and postcards to give out to people who were interested in my work. 

I had ended up using some of the pages from my book full sized in my portfolio, and everyone I showed was interested in seeing the whole book afterwards which was a positive sign. I got very positive reactions to my work, particularly my book so I think having it printed in time to take with me was a really good idea.
In hindsight, I do wish I had taken more copies with me. Although I couldn't afford to have them on the stall for people to just take, it would have been nice to have a few extra copies to give to the bigger companies who were interested. Although by the end of Wednesday when I went back to the stall my book had gone, so somebody was obviously interested in my work!

I showed my book to a company called Ginger Books, and within a few days of the fair finishing I got an email asking me to send them a PDF of my portfolio as they are interested in my work, particularly my book. They are still quite a small company, and I am still waiting for any feedback, but it's great to get such a positive response so quickly.

I also managed to get an appointment for the portfolio surgery on the Wednesday afternoon with Strawberrie Donnelly from Little Tiger Press. She liked my book, and gave me some good feedback. She said she really liked the idea for my story, and said that the text was well written and it had potential. Her main piece of advice was that my character looked too old for the audience I am aiming my book at, so I would need to adapt her proportions and facial features to make her look younger. Overall she said she liked my work so once I have worked on the things she had advised and gained more confidence in my work she would like to hear from me again in around six months. 
This was a fantastic opportunity, and gave me some really valuable feedback to work on.

Going to London was a really useful experience. It gave me a much clearer idea of what publishers and companies are looking for in a book, and also gave me a chance to show my work to publishers face to face, an opportunity that I probably wouldn't have gotten if I hadn't gone to the Book Fair.

Printing

Now I have all my pages finished and in order I need to start printing my book.

I made my book into a PDF document using indesign, and then started looking at print companies.

I wanted to take some of my books to London Book Fair to show off my work, so cost was going to be an issue if I was going to give them away to people. I decided to have my books printed A5 - half the size I had originally intended - to save on cost, and make some full sized versions myself.

I had been looking at using Inky Little Fingers, however I found a company called Printed.com that offered faster printing at a lower price so in the end I chose to use them. 

When my books arrived I was really pleased, they were really nice quality and perfect to take to London Book Fair. I did, however, decide to round the corners of the pages using my corner cutter so that they would match my postcards that I was taking. It took a while to cut them, but it did give my books a special touch and matched my other promotional items. 

Final images

These are the final finished images for each page of my book in order:

Cover and End Pages

When designing my page layouts I hadn't decided upon a cover design for my book, as I wanted to make some of the pages first to see how they would look before I committed myself to a cover design. I did, however, know that I wanted one image to wrap around and be the front and back cover, so I decided to use one of the scenes from my book.

Once I had designed the "I want to be a Leaf..." "...So I can drift in the wind" pages I really liked the scenery in the background and the colours of the trees. I decided to use this scene and adapt it for my cover by changing the character's position on the front and moving around the background elements. I used two trees that met in the middle of the page, meaning that the image would flow between the front cover and the back. I decided to name the book "What do you want to be today?" 

For my end pages I had always wanted to use a texture or pattern from the book, and I did try using the pattern from my character's clothes. However I found that this pattern did not really match the paint and collage theme of my book when I tried it. Next I thought about just having the leaves falling like they are in the book, only without any of the other scenery.

I liked this idea, as it was simple yet effective, but I felt that it was a bit too simple to gain a child's interest. Also, I didn't like that it was so similar to my front cover. The falling leaves only take up two pages of the book, so I didn't want both the cover and the end pages to use them as this gives the impression that they play a much bigger role in the book than they actually do, so I decided to think of something else.

I liked the flowers I had used on the "I want to be a Flower..." page, and thought that they hadn't had much focus in the book. I tried repeating a whole page of them, and found that they made a really nice pattern. I decided to use this as my end pages instead. 

Variations of Pages

Once I had finished a few of my pages, I started to question if they were too busy and complicated, so I decided to try and simplify them right down to see how that looked. 

I started with my "I want to be a Leaf..." page, using some of my original experiments as inspiration. 

I liked the simplified version as an image on it's own, but I did question whether it would appeal to children as much as the colourful version I had done originally. I asked some people to help me decide and the majority of people said they liked the simple version, but the colourful version has so much more depth and interest that it would work much better in the book. 

I decided to use the colourful version in the end, however I did make the simple version into some postcards, and it does work well as an image on it's own. 

I tried a similar experiment with the "I want to be a Flower..." page, and got similar feedback. Although the flower page was much simpler to begin with I was more experimenting with a much smaller colour palette to see if this looked better. I decided that the muted colour scheme of the second image wasn't bright or interesting enough to capture a child's interest, so again I decided to use my original image.

Starting my Final images...

By this stage in my project I already have my characters cut out, my font scanned in, washes of paint for my background, and my final text decided upon. All I need to start doing is putting them together.

My pages were all designed to be A3 (an A4 double page spread), so in an A3 photoshop document I started putting my background together Starting with the "floor" and the wall/sky to make a good base to start from.

I then add in my character as she is the main focus of the page.

Next I gradually built up the other main aspects of the image. For this page it is the flowers. The flowers are all in different layers in photoshop so I can arrange and resize them all to adapt the composition of the page.

I then add the text. This takes a while as I have to place each letter individually, but it does make a huge difference to the image. Having each letter cut out does look much more effective than typing it, as the collaged letters complement the rest of the image, and make the page look more unified.

I then added the last few details of the image, in this case the butterfly, and my page is finished. 

My all my images were made in this way, although obviously some took longer than others. For example the page with falling leaves took much longer to put together because I had to add each leaf individually, and gradually build up the tree in the same way I had made piles of leaves on the floor for my collage experiments

Font Experiments

Originally I had assumed the text in my book would be a standard computer font. Although for my page layouts I had simply written the text in, hand lettering has never been something I am good at. I didn't want my text to look amateurish on the page, and so I decided to use a computer font.

I started to experiment with arranging my text on a page, trying to incorporate it within the image. 

I liked the positioning of the text in these images, but the text didn't quite look like it was part of the image. I wanted to keep the text childlike because the story is told from the child's point of view, which is why I didn't keep the size of each letter exactly the same and made it slightly wonky on the page. 

I decided to try cutting out some letters to see if collaging the text would be more effective. To match the colours of my book I decided to use the same paper as another part of the book. I started out using the brown paper I have used for the floor, however this was rather thin and flimsy and it was a struggle to keep the paper from curling up or ripping when I tried to scan it. Instead, I used the grey paper I had been using for my character's shirt and socks. This paper is quite thick, which meant it was a bit more durable than the brown paper I had been using. 

Once I had scanned them I started to place them into the images and used them to replace the computer font. 

 I much prefer the collaged text than the computer font, as I feel that the cut out letters really compliment the image and look like they are meant to be there, whereas the computer letters looked a little out of place.
I will use the collaged font in my final pieces.

Text

When I first started working on my book my idea was based around the phrase: "When I grow up, I want to be...". On the next page would be the object that the child wanted to be to create a before/after format for the book. 

This was my idea at it's most basic stage, and in order to develop a narrative I had to change this slightly. As I had decided to make my story follow one girl throughout her day, I decided to start the story with her waking up and finishing with her going to bed at the end of the day, and so I started my story with "Good Morning" on the first double page, then ""What do you want to be today?" on the second. I decided to end my book with her wanting to be the moon, and the text on the last page reads "What do you want to be tomorrow?" 

After researching the things children want to be, I found that most of the more interesting ones weren't career ambitions or things they can become in reality, which made me question the "When I grow up" part of my text. 

I thought about why children wanted to be those things, and what benefit they would get from it. Children are not particularly patient, they often don't understand the concept of time and waiting until "later" for something. Most children would not look think that they want to become a cat later in their life, they want to become one now.
Because of this I decided to change my text in my book to "I want to be... A Flower" rather than "When I grow up I want to be... A flower"

So at this point the text in my book is:

page 1 - (front cover)

page 2/3 - (end pages)

page 4/5 - "Good Morning"

page 6/7 - "What do you want to be today?"

page 8/9 - "I want to be.."

page 10/11 - "A Giant"

page 12/13 - "I want to be.."

page 14/15 - "A Leaf"

page 16/17 - "I want to be.."

page 18/19 - "A Flower"

page 20/21 - "I want to be.."

page 22/23 - "A Cat"

page 24/25 - "I want to be.."

page 26/27 - "The Moon"

page 28/29 - "What shall I be tomorrow?"

page 30/31 - (end pages)

page 32 - (back cover)

This is the text I was using whilst designing my page layouts, however I was worried that it was too simple to interest children. I went back to thinking about the reasons children want to be these things, and decided to include them within the text. This meant re-organising how the text went onto each page, as I still had to fit it into my 32 page book format, so I decided to make the first page of a pair "I want to be the Moon..." and the second page "...So I can stay awake all night!"

This made my story more interesting to read, and hopefully will appeal to children, whilst still fitting into my original page format.

My text for each page is now:

page 1 - (front cover)

page 2/3 - (end pages)

page 4/5 - "Good Morning"

page 6/7 - "What do you want to be today?"

page 8/9 - "I want to be a Giant..."

page 10/11 - "...So I can reach everything!"

page 12/13 - "I want to be a Leaf..."

page 14/15 - "...So I can drift in the wind!"

page 16/17 - "I want to be a Flower..."

page 18/19 - "...So butterflies will land on me!" 

page 20/21 - "I want to be a Cat..."

page 22/23 - "...So I can go exploring all day!"

page 24/25 - (no text)

page 26/27 - "I want to be the Moon..."

page 28/29 - "...So I can stay awake all night!"

page 30/31 - (end pages)

page 32 - (back cover)

At this stage in my project I am about to put together my final art work for my pages, and so this is the version that will go into my book. It is the most effective wording for my book that I have come up with so far, and I need to start putting the text into my layout so I can't spend much longer making changes, and so this is my final draft of my text.

Media and Technique

I was still unsure of the ratio of collage to paint that would work on my design, but I knew I wanted my character to be entirely made from collage so I decided to make my character for a few different pages and experiment digitally with the backgrounds.

I then started playing around with with backgrounds using photoshop. I didn't really find any patterned paper that worked as a background, as it seemed to distract from the image, so I tried painting washes of water colour paint onto thick paper and scanning this in. 

I found that this had the right balance between texture and simplicity, as it was textured enough that it looked effective with the image, but so plain and simple that it didn't distract from the main character. 

I also experimented with fading the background colour out and making it bleed to the edges of the page to see which was more effective. Although I quite like the faded out experiment, I think that once the illustration is in book format having the image reaching to the edge of each page will have a nice effect, especially as I intend to include the text within the image. I think that if I was to design the book to have the image on one page and the text on the opposite page then fading the image out and having a white border would look effective, but as I am having the image over a double page spread and including the text within the image I think the most effective technique is to make the image full bleed. 

For my research project I had experimented with texture, and had discovered that scanning in real leaves to use within an image added a lot of texture and interest to the page. It also adds tones and colours that I would struggle to create myself using paint, so I decided to use them for the falling leaves.

However, the scanned in leaves didn't layer up very well to go onto the trees or make the piles of leaves on the ground, so I had to think of another way of doing this. I painted more pieces of paper using watercolour paint, this time using lots of layers of paint to create different tones and colours rather than the flat washes of colour I had done for the background. I used red, purple and orange tones, as if the leaves are falling from the trees then they had to be Autumn colours. 

Having scanned in a few sheets of painted paper I started to randomly select small areas in photoshop, making sure there were holes and gaps in each shape that you would be able to see through. I then copied some of these shapes into the image I was working on, and layered them up on the "ground" by her feet. This worked really well, as the colours and tones matched the leaves, and the paint was uneven enough to look like there were lots of leaves in the pile. The gaps in the shapes helped to create depth as they made the shapes blend together easier, and look more 3D.

I think collaging painted paper to make a background is what I will continue to do, as it compliments the character well, and adds texture to the image without being too overwhelming and making the image look busy.