Graphic Narrative Evaluation

Does your final product reflect your original intentions?

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

I think that my final product reflects the original intentions I had for my work. The features of my work that have remained the same are the characters and the techniques I used to create and develop them. As well as the way that I created my background and the rotoscoping technique I used to create objects such as trees.

My digital flat plans also include representations of the characters I had included into my narrative. The flat plan allowed me to practice with the positioning of the characters and see if the connotations that came with the difference in the positioning would have an influence on the reader’s opinions of the characters. For example, I positioned the witch higher up on the image than the rest of the characters. This carries connotations of power and strength. I wanted these connotations to be expressed in my final product. This is because I wanted the antagonist to be intimidating and clearly superior to the rest of the characters.

This is the story board that I created during my pre-production. The piece includes all of the characters that I wanted to be included in my story. The main picture represents my plans for the scenery of the story to be in a forest, which the majority of my finished story is based around. Furthermore, the story board also gives me an opportunity to make any changes I feel are necessary during the early stages of production, as opposed to making changes to the final product.

The setting of my book reflects my storyboard and the setting I originally intended to use. The trees in this exemplified page have been rotoscoped directly from the trees in the above picture. I also used the colour selector tool to give my animated trees a similar colour to the real life ones depicted in the image of my story board. The reason I used the colour from the original image is because I wanted to add a sense of photorealism to my work, and make the environment look more realistic. I also gave tress which were further away a darker colour, creating the illusion that they are further into the distance than the rest of the trees in the forest.

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.

I created my images by using stereotypical colours for locations. For example, when I was creating the forest for my first page, I used a dark green colour for the grass and a light brown for the trees. On a different page I wanted to create a foggy backdrop behind the forest, I did this by using the shape tool and creating a rectangle to cover the blank section of the page. I then used the gradient overlay tool to choose two colours, white and black. The gradient overlay tool allowed me to mix the colours together to give the impression that there was fog in the forest. I did this because I felt that it would create a scary atmospheric look and set the tone for the next part of the narrative.

This image exemplifies the use of textures and specific colours within my work. The textures I used were for creating things such as the carpet, wallpaper and welcome mat. For the carpet I added the texture effect which gave the rectangle shape a rough look, I did the same effect with the welcome mat, although I turned the opacity of the colour overlay low enough so that it would stand out from the other textures I had used.

I also wanted to set the scene for this image. The narrative implies earlier on that Barky is in her house, I therefore wanted to make sure that the illustrations I were creating matched what was happening in the narrative. I made the setting look more like the inside of a house by creating things such as the picture hanging from the wall and the clock. I created the picture with the shape tools and then duplicated my two protagonists, made them small enough to fit into the photo frame and then merged all the layers and scaled the whole thing down to look more to scale with the rest of the house.

This is another image exemplifying how I have constructed my images. I think that this image is poorly constructed as opposed to the previous image. This is because of the blank space on the floor. I feel that it gives the impression that something is missing from the picture. I also don’t like the colour of the text in this page, however I thought that it would bring connotations of darkness and evil which I wanted to bring in, to add to the readers interpretation of the antagonist.

I also used different shades of colour to highlight specific features. An example of this is that I used lighter shades of red around the cape character’s cape. I did this to increase the depiction of the bright red hood that is synonymous with the Little Red Riding Hood character. Instead of creating lots of smoke around the witch for when she disappears in the narrative, instead I turned the opacity of the layer to 50% so that it would give the impression that the character is magically disappearing from the scene.

How well have you used text to anchor your images

• You should talk about the combination of words, images and text.

I think that I have used the combination of words, images and text well. For example, I created different versions of characters to match the text and the section of the narrative. An example of this within my work would be that towards the conclusion of my book there is a scene where the main character is running away. Instead of using existing versions of the character I had already created, I decided to rotoscope a completely new version which would match the narrative of the character running away.

I also made sure that I included thorough detail into my text describing exactly what is going on in each scene. Furthermore, I used close up shots to depict the narrative as close as possible. An example of this technique within my work is page two where I created a close up shot of the antagonists hand knocking on the door which is being described in the narrative.

Another way I used text to anchor my images is by using Photoshop techniques to capture pivotal moments in the narrative. An example of this is when I lowered the opacity of the witch to 50%. I did this because, during the narrative it is revealed to the reader that the witch has disappeared. Therefore, the illustration is giving the reader an insight as to how the character has vanished from the scene.

This photograph exemplifies the first version of my character, this version shows the character in a stationary state. This also suits the context of the page, because it is the reader’s first introduction to the character, therefore I wanted to show lots of facial details. This is because children are quickly drawn to the faces of characters. I also chose to have the character stood side on, the reason for this is that in the text the characters colours and body size are referenced. So, the illustration of the character is exemplifying the text.

This version of my character depicts them running, which was vital for this scene as I wanted to make sure that the illustrations I created would match the text on the page. I created this character by using the shape tool and warping eclipse shapes to each individual body part of a running wolf that I found on Google images. I then used the colour overlay tool to choose the same colours as the previous version of the character, so that the reader would recognize them as the same character.

Is your product suitable for your audience?

• Reference your proposal• Give an audience profile and describe

suitability in reference to contentI think that I have created my book for the target audience I set to aim the product towards. The target audience I chose was 1-10 year olds. I chose such a low age because the book can be read to the child by their parents until they learn how to read and are able to read the book themselves. My book is not aimed t a particular gender, I made sure that my book did not come across as trying to appeal to one gender more than another. I did this by including colours which are associated with both girls and boys, such as blues and pinks. Because my target audience age is so low, I made sure to keep the text simplistic and not use too many big words. After researching during my proposal, I found that families who buy children's books are most likely to be working and middle class. The reason behind this is that upper class families tend to purchase audio books to read to their child. Furthermore, I tried to make the book as suitable for my audience as possible. An example of one way I made the book more suitable, was by toning down the darkness of the story. At the climax of the story it is revealed that Little Red Riding Hood’s fate is that he is never seen again, however my original intentions for the climax was that he was killed by the witch. Instead, I chose to make the end more suitable for my audience and have Little Brown Wolf fall into a trap and disappearing.

This is the page of my story that I decided to re-write in order to make the book more suitable for my target audience. Instead of the witch killing the wolf, instead I developed a scenario where the witch sets a trap for the wolf and the reader is told that the wolf was never seen again. This makes the book much more child friendly and allows the child to have hope that the wolf might, one day, be found. The text throughout this page also exemplifies my consideration for the age of my audience. I made sure not to use words that were too long and complex for a child to be able to understand.

These two images are examples of how I made sure not to make my book look as though I was aiming at a particular gender. The top page is my first page, which has a light blue sky and then bottom page is my last page, which has a light pink, which is meant to represent a sunset, which I felt was fitting because as well as it being the end of the day in this scene, it is also the end of the story.

The problem I found with this page is that due to me duplicating the setting from a previous page which had the forest, the sun is up in the sky, when it should be down towards the right, to represent the sun setting. However, by using both of the stereotypical colours for both genders, my book doesn’t come across as aiming at one gender in particular.

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

• Reference specific tools you used with imagesI enjoyed using the rotoscope technique as it allowed me to create detailed characters based off of real life pictures of trees and other scenery. The technique is done through the use of the polygonal lasso tool. By using this technique I was able to add a sense of photorealism to my work. Another technique which I used was the shape tool technique. This technique includes finding real life images which will fit into my work and using the shape tool to warp shapes around the images and create characters. I liked the simplistic look of the shape tool technique as opposed to the photorealism of the objects. I combined these two techniques together because I liked the idea of having cartoon looking characters in front of a setting filled with photorealism.

The trees and tree stumps in this image were all rotoscoped from real life images.

The characters in the image were all created using the shape tool technique.

I created this character by tracing an image of a real wolf cub using the shape tool. I used lots of different ellipses to create different sections of the wolf’s body. The part I liked about this technique is that the finished product looks like a cartoon, however the details of the face and the shading of the body, give the character a sense of photorealism. In order to create the difficult eye markings, I used the rotoscoping technique, which is done by using the polygon lasso tool on the original image, selecting the section you want and then layer copying it onto your piece of work and adding your desired colour overlay. I think the mix of the two techniques worked well together because the character looks detailed despite its simplistic design.

For the creation of this character, I decided I wanted to create my own design and produce a unique character. I used the shape tool to create all of the character. Another reason why I like the shape tool is because of the technique which can be paired with it. Through the usage of the warp tool, I was able to turn the eyes of my character into the shape that eyes should be. The warp tool also allowed me to warp the largest ellipse into the shape of the hood, which is the most important feature of Little Red Riding Hood. The thing that I dislike about the warp tool is that its very difficult to create complex shapes, for example when I was creating the hood, I had difficulty getting the bottom of the shape to be wide and the very top to come to a point.

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

The thing I like the most about my final product is how it is a simplistic design. I like this because sometimes I feel that if a product is too detailed it can look over the top and not be as effective as a product which has used simplistic techniques such as using the shape tool to create their pages. The thing that I dislike most about my final product is the textures of the grass. I firstly tried using the texture tool, however this gave the layer a bold appearance and looked too cartoonish. I then added a pattern overlay whilst keeping my existing colour overlay, although I turned the opacity of the colour overlay down to 90%. This allowed the pattern overlay to be slightly depicted and give the grass a slightly rougher texture.

This image exemplifies the simplicity of my work. The bricks I used to create the house were created by using the shape tool to make rectangles and then giving them different tones of colour. I created the clouds by using the eclipse shape and warping the shape to look like a cloud.

The features of this piece I don’t like is the empty space. This is a recurring problem my book has. After completion I noticed that certain pages had a vast amount of empty space, making the page look empty and unfinished.

A feature of my work that I do like is the close ups. I have used close ups twice throughout my book. These are effective because the reader is directly drawn to the illustration which is depicting exactly what is being said in the text. Furthermore, this page also acts as a teaser introduction of the witch. This is because it is not yet revealed that the character is a witch, however the green skin tone of the hand gives the reader a clue of who the character is. This technique also creates tension as the reader will want to continue the story and find out who this mysterious character is.

This is another page that exemplifies my use of close ups. However, this page has a more interesting backdrop behind the main depiction. The main depiction of this page is the hands, I chose to add these to the image as it gives the impression of a point of view shot being used in order to give the reader an idea of what the character is seeing and their emotions at the time. I think my work could have been improved with better knowledge and skills of Photoshop, for example I would have liked to create some close up shots in 3D, as I feel this would make my work look more professional and be more intriguing for the reader, this is because traditional book tend to stay in 3D, therefore my book would be unique and would be more visually intriguing for a child.

Why did you include the content you used?

• Images, fonts, effects, coloursThe main effect I used repeatedly through my work, was the gradient overlay. I used this effect to create the sky for my images. The reason I used this effect is because it allowed me to choose multiple colours, and then let me position them and choose how much I wanted of each colour. I chose to do the bricks of the house in a stereotypical orange colour, to add realism to the image I found an image of a brick wall on Google images and used the colour selector tool to choose the different shades of orange, to give the house some photorealism.

The font I used was Hobo Std. I chose this font because I liked the simplicity of it. I didn’t want to choose a font that was crazy and unreadable, as the point of my book is that it can be read by parents and their children. The main problem I had with the text was keeping it the same colour throughout the book, this is because different backgrounds would allow white font, as the background was already very light, or vice versa with black font. This meant that I had to switch between white and black font so that the text was visible. I dislike this about my work as I feel that because of this, the book lacks consistency.

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?

My work doesn’t feature a large variety of ages, races, social groups or religions. This is because the only human character in my book is little red riding hood. Although my story is different to the original, I wanted to keep the amount of characters as low as possible. I did this for a number of reasons. Firstly, a child would struggle to remember a large group of characters, as well as forgetting which is the protagonist and which is the antagonist. Secondly, if I were to give little brown wolf a companion, the story would be straying too far from the original layout, this is because the audience is supposed to feel worried about the safety of little brown wolf, and I felt that making them an independent character would make the reader care about them.

The one character in my book which is a child is Little Red Riding Hood. To make the character appear as a child I used the scaling technique. This means that I placed the character next to bigger characters such as the witch, allowing the reader to get an understanding of the stature of the character and their age. Furthermore, I used the shape tool to create an ellipse whilst holding shift, this allowed me to create a perfect circle and give the character the impression of having an undeveloped facial structure.

For the male character in my book, I chose to give the character a more square face, which further increases the readers awareness of Little Red Riding Hoods rounded face. Another feature I gave to this character was facial hair. I added facial hair to the character as this is a distinctive difference between males and females, making it more obvious to the reader that this character is a man.

The choice of colours was also very important when creating both characters. For the female I chose brighter colours, such as whites and reds, and for the male I chose dark colours such as blacks and greys. I chose to do this because dark colours are often associated with men, and bright, vibrant, outgoing colours and associated with women.

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?The style I have used in my work is simplistic. I tried to keep the key visuals of the characters truthful to previous representations of them in past versions of the Little Red Riding Hood stories.

An existing product that influenced my work was ‘Gorilla’ by Anthony Browne. This influenced my work because I liked the way that Browne had designed the appearance of the Gorilla. He toned down the aggressive look of the gorilla so that his book would be more suitable for small children. I took influence from this and used the same approach with the witch character in my story. Instead of giving the character an angry facial expression, which may be disturbing for a small child; instead I gave the character a

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

• How did the planning and research help• How well did you manage your time• Reference specific examples

My planning was not as efficient as it could have been. This is because I gave myself too much to do in each session, instead of spacing the work out across two weeks, I was aiming to complete the work by the first week and use the second week to make improvements and any changes that I felt were appropriate. This meant that I was rushing through the work, which made the work feel repetitive and boring. However, I managed to finish the work in the first week to a decent standard, which left my week two to focus on areas which needed improvement such as the text and layout of each page.

During my pre-production I also created a number of characters using the shape tool technique. This allowed me to get a head start on the two week production and simply drop the characters into the backdrops and scenery I was creating. This was the most efficient use of my time during the pre-production.

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?

My work is truthful to the previous Little Red Riding Hood stories. This is because the character still possesses the apparel that has become iconic to the protagonist. After comparing my work to similar products such as Hairy Maclary Scattercat, I noticed that the book uses the technique of having the text on a separate page to the illustrations. I think that the technique I used of having the text and illustrations on the same page is a more efficient approach with regard to the production of the book, as well as making the book easier to read. I think Hairy Maclary Scattercat would be a more difficult book to read than mine, mainly because the reader has to take their attention away from the text in order to view the illustrations on the next page. I think that this would confuse a child as the order of the book could confuse them, such as mistaking the text on the page to be directly linked to the illustrations on the previous page. However, I think that my book will be much easier to follow as I have included the text on the same page, and my illustrations were well thought out and give a clear representation of the narrative.

Peer Feedback

• Summarise peer feedback and discuss– Responses you agree with– Responses you disagree with