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.

Collaging Process

I had been using a lot of collage in previous projects, however for those I had been sticking all the items down on one piece of paper together. For my Olio project at the beginning of the year I tried collaging the body of my figure together away from the paper, then the limbs separately, and scanning them to put together digitally. This made the composition of the image much easier to do, as if an arm was too high up, or a foot was in the way of something, I could easily adjust this without moving the whole figure as they would be on separate layers. 

This makes the whole process of creating the image much easier, and means that I don't have to compromise on the composition of the page simply because I have stuck my figure's arm on at slightly the wrong angle.

To start with I draw in pencil how I want my character to look on the page. At this stage all I need is a simple line image.

I then split the image into each different section I will be collaging using tracing paper. I need to draw a shape for each piece that I will be cutting out, and quite often the pieces need to overlap to help them stick together, so the shapes quite often don't look very similar to the original image. 

The next stage is to start cutting out the paper. I trace the shape onto the back of the paper so no pencil marks show making sure I flip the tracing paper over so it comes out backwards. Then I cut out each piece with a scalpel knife, and stick together using a glue pen. If it's a particularly flimsy cut out then I also put some tape on the back to secure it, but I have to make sure this is hidden. Generally unless it's a very simple pose, I keep the arms and legs separate from the body when I stick them so I can scan them in separately.

Next, I scan in the pieces. 

Once I have them scanned in I can add the details - such as facial features, pockets, fingers... - digitally, and simply place the character into the page on photoshop. It is much longer to do this process than to simply collage it all together in one go, but it does give me much more control when I reach the digital stage of the process, and if there is a problem having the figure in pieces makes it much much easier to change or fix.

Next steps...

Now I have finished my storyboard I will focus my time on media and creating a finished look for my pages. I will experiment further with colour combinations and how much collage to use in my images, and when this is finalised I can start to create my final pages. I am fairly sure that the style I want to create my book with is mixing collage with ink or paint, however I want to experiment to see how much of the image can be collage without overwhelming it. I also want to try out tubes of watercolour paint for the background rather than the pan watercolours I currently use to see if a bolder clearer colour is more effective.

I need to finalise the text for my book, and break it up into which bits will fit onto which pages.  At the moment I have a story planned out, but I haven't decided on the final wording of the text, whether to keep it short or complicated, or how exactly it will be split between the pages. These are all things I need to decide upon next. 
I also need to design the text for my book, both the font and the positioning on the page, which will also affect the layout of the pages. I don't want my text to simply go at the bottom or side of the page, so I want to experiment with ways of incorporating the text into the image.

I will start looking at different ways in which to make my book. I want to make a handmade version of my book, so I will need to research and experiment with different techniques of book binding. I also want to have a few copies made proffessionally, so I will need to look at print companies to order from.


I plan to spend the next few weeks experimenting with these things to make my final design clear and finished before looking into producing the final book.

Story Board and Mock Book

At this stage in my project I wanted to start to make the storyline and ideas for page layouts more certain so I could start to develop the style and composition of the book. I chose to use a 32 page, A4 portrait format, as most of my sketches had been done in an A3 landscape sketchbook so would fit nicely into this format.

To fit into the 32 page book I had to decide on which things I was going to make my little girl imagine herself as. I decided to keep the images in a pair of "before" and "after" images like my initial sketches had been, and I also had to take into account how many pages would be taken up by the cover, beginning and end. This left me with 10 pages, which I split into 5 pairs.
The pages I chose in the end were:

• a leaf
• a cat
• a flower
• the moon
• a giant

I now had to put these ideas into an order that a story would fit around. When thinking of these ideas I had also been thinking about the reasons that a child would want to become them. What is so great about being a cat that a child would want to become one? Why would a child want to become a leaf? What use would a child have from becoming a giant? Children don't want to become these things for no reason, so I began to think about what attributes these things have that a child would want.

I decided upon a reason for each of the objects that the child wanted to be.

The reasons were:

• a leaf - to fly in the wind/fall from the tree
• a cat - to go exploring/go on adventures/crawl around everywhere
• a flower - so butterflies would land on me/would smell nice
• the moon - stay up all night/live with the stars
• a giant - to reach everything/to be taller than my older brother

I sketched these ideas out in my book as small, rough thumbnails to make sure the order was right, then I started to take each idea and expand on it to get a rough composition for each page.

Once I had completed my storyboard in my sketchbook, I decided to create a basic mock book to get a better idea of how my drawings look together, and also to see the effect the fold down the middle of the page would have on the composition. I just used basic sketches to show the layout of each page.

Now the storyboard and layouts of each page are finalised I will spend time creating images that are more finished and final. I will use the images from my storyboard in my experiments and eventually create my final images using them.

Colour Combinations

To get a better idea of the colours that would work well in my book I painted lots of swatches of colour and cut them out so that I could compare various combinations.

Being able to select colours from these will help me try out new colour combinations, and also allow me to limit the amount of colours I use by being able to easily see which combinations would create the effect I want for each page.

Paint and Collage

I decided to experiment with the different levels of collage and paint in my work. Originally I had planned to just collage the characters and keep the background painted, however I wanted to find out how effective using collage in small areas of the background was. For another project I had been doing this year I collaged the main focus of the page and used a plain painted background, however although this works with a very simple background I didn't think this would be effective for a page with scenery behind the character.

I started with a sketch I had used in my storyboard of my character standing amongst some flowers. This was a fairly simple composition to experiment with, as the flowers were the only things in the background.

I collaged the figure, and added in small amounts of collage in the background such as a few of the flowers or some of the plant stems. I like this effect and think I will carry on working in this way, however I need to adjust the colours of this image so that the figure is the main focus and the viewer is not distracted by the bright colours of the flowers. I also need to neaten up the painted parts of the image, as the paint has run slightly in certain areas.