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 productFrom the very beginning of this project (researching in to children's books)

I had vague ideas of what I wanted my final piece to look like but it wasn’t until I started making up storyboards in to detail that I had a better understanding of what I wanted my final product to look like. My storyboards looked quite similar to my final piece in the way the characters were placed, how many characters there were, who was male and female and the background as the villagers were further away showing they were on another hill far back in to the distance. Apart from the fact that my storyboard is black and white and the characters differed a bit, for example I couldn’t find sheep so I used goats instead, the final product looks a lot like my storyboard but better.

The digital flat plan I made was my storyboard but with text on, showing where I would place my text, why it would go there and what font and colour it would be in. On the digital flat plan the text has been moved around to different places on different pages. I did this so it would look better as there could be a lot of detail on one page therefore placing the text in a quieter area would make it look better and much easier to read. On my final product the text is in the same place on each slide. This being the sky. I did this as I didn’t realise how much text would be on one page and I couldn’t have the font too small due to the book being for children and they may have struggled to read this. I made the text fit on the background in the sky so this would be a quieter area than anywhere else. I think this was a good idea, as the book is very repetitive the pages look very similar therefore I had a place to put the text every time.

How well have you constructed your images?

• You could talk about the overall visual appearance as well as the use of texture and colour.

I created many images when making this product. I made all of these over Photoshop including my background. Although at first I didn’t like the rotoscoping method, I soon came to like it as I realised it was a quick and easy process and due to this I used it for most of my images. My characters; the people and sheep also the tree and the village (the houses) were all rotoscoped from pictures I had looked at on the internet. It made thee process a lot quicker than it would have if I were to use the shape tool method as I would have then had to warp the shapes to the original outline of what I was trying to create and this would have taken a lot of time up. I used shapes for my clouds but I never had to warp these as it was simple to create and I didn’t need a template of sorts. As I created my characters I never really thought about what they would wear whether this to be old or modern clothing as I didn’t really set it in a specific time period. As I rotoscoped a shepherd who was a boy dressed up I ended up making him wear a robe with sandals creating a very old look therefore I had to do this with the rest of my characters. The main villager wears dungarees and the other two wear old, dark brown outfits that represent the working class. I never used any texture on any of my images as I was going for the cartoon look and I though texture would have added a real sort of feel to it, although it doesn’t look real as they are cartoon pictures I wanted it to look more cartoon like rather than realistic.

How well have you constructed your images?

I think the only problem with rotoscoping is that the lines aren’t smooth, they’re quite edgy. When creating my characters I personally didn’t like how this looked therefore sometimes using the paint tool to make the edges smooth. As I used the oval shape for my background; hills, sky and clouds this didn’t occur so I didn’t have to change this in any way and it didn’t matter to my houses as they are square and rectangle shaped anyway. I like the way the characters outlines look smooth rather than jagged but some of the villagers still have this effect.

How well have you used text to anchor your images• You should talk about the combination of

words, images and text.Text within my book was similar all the way through. This was a

really important thing to consider when planning the book as it’s for children therefore they could be reading it that being so the text would need to be in a suitable font and size. It would need to be big, bold, clear and well spaced. When creating my flat plans I had to give thought as to where I would place the text. I had the choice to position the text on the pictured page or on a separate blank page just before the pictured one.

I chose to place my text on the pictured page as I thought this would further help children understand what was happening, they can reflect back to where the text is on the page and re-read what is going on. When creating my flat plans I saw there was enough space on each page to add text, as there was enough space I thought it would look too empty if I were to just leave it.

Most books I looked at in my research also had text on the page and I felt wrongly to stray from my original ideas as these were the type of books I looked at

In the book I also used speech bubbles that had a slight difference to the font but it was still clear and simple enough to read, this was just a repeat of what characters said in the text at the top of the page so there’s no concern if they cannot read as it’s already there.

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 spoke about how I wanted my audience to range from around the ages of 5 – 8. My reason for this is because at that age their imagination is very wide. This can lead to a lot of fibbing/lying and the moral of this story is to prevent people telling lies as it can get them in to trouble. The story is for both male and females and any class e.g. working, middle, upper class.

My story is aimed at anyone who speaks and reads the English language as this is wrote in English e.g. U.K, America, Norway etc.

When I researched in to the story of The boy who cried wolf, I realised there were multiple endings. These were; In one of the endings the wolf eats the boy. In another ending the wolf eats the sheep. In another ending the wolf eats both the boy and the sheep. I didn’t really find a story that had an ending where the wolf just chased the sheep away and I thought the previous three were quite vicious to use in a children's book therefore I used the script and pictures of the wolf chasing the sheep away.

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

• Reference specific tools you used with imagesThere are many different techniques I have used from making the images for my book to

the text. At first when we started learning about all the different techniques we can use and putting them in to practise, I really liked the shape task tool that we used, this was using simple shapes e.g. squares, rectangles, circles etc and then warping them to an outline/template we had gotten from the internet. This did take up time and could be a bit tricky depending on what sort of shape we were trying to accomplish. We then moved on to the rotoscoping task.

At the beginning of this course, just after we learnt about the shape task, we moved on to the rotoscoping task. This I didn’t like at first. It was too tricky, I didn’t really understand it and I thought the shape tool was much easier. I only really used this once when we were practising it and I think this may be why I didn’t really like it. As we started the book I did start with the shape tool but then realised this was taking up a lot of time and I needed all the time I could get as I needed to finish this on the deadline. I moved on to the rotoscoping task and then realised how much quicker it was and it was actually easier as I didn’t have to mess around trying to warp my shape to the outline that would most probably go wrong with a tricky shape.

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

The text tool was the next technique I used. Although I didn't use any of the complex pieces of text e.g. the big, coloured, bubble type looking text that we used when we practising, I did use the character setting to change the distance between words, letters and distance in lines. I quite liked this technique from the beginning as it was really simple to do, even that complex text which consisted of putting a picture in to some text.

I used normal fonts such as Arial on my book but I spaced my words and letters out a lot wider than what would normally do as my book is aimed at young children and they struggle to read smaller writing than older people do.

What do you like about how your final product looks?

I am really happy with how my final product looks. I think this is because of how well it fits to my storyboard, and how well I fit my time schedule to my book.

Normally I’m usually not too good with sticking to plans as I stray away and think of something else that may look good to do and then I end up doing more work than I planned, having less time and then overall, my final piece doesn’t look as good as I would have liked It to be.

I found some inspiration from the research I did on children's books on how I wanted my background to look so for my storyboard I put these ideas down although I didn’t outline the hills I placed characters in different places to show where the hills would be and how far back they were going to be as an example I made my villagers quite small especially to the shepherd.

The shepherd was placed next to a tree closest to the front of the page to show all the attentions was on him. When the villagers got involved I would make everything bigger including them as if I had zoomed in to the scene to again show where the attention was, the text explains but as this is for young children the pictures help show what we are explaining.

I think I prefer my background to my actual characters apart from my sheep as they went well. This includes the houses as well, in my opinion they just fit in and I like the way the sky has sunset and sunrise to show the difference in day and night.

What do you dislike about how your final product looks?

I think the thing I disliked most about my book was how I used the rotoscoping tool and the effect it had on the images I created. I didn’t use this to the best of my ability therefore it looked more edgy than it normally would if I were to take careful time with it. I did use the paint tool periodically to try and smooth out the edging of the characters but I didn’t use this on all of them so still now there is a villager that’s outline is edgy.

Some of the detail on the characters faces aren’t great as I left the adjustments to the end and I thought this wouldn’t take up to much time but in a way it did. Especially due to me rushing to get the facial features done, it doesn’t look the best.

Why did you include the content you used?

• Images, fonts, effects, coloursI didn’t really use any different type of fonts, just that same one or similar throughout. I used the same

spacing between each word and height between each line with the character tool to make this a lot easier for younger children to understand and read. I used the font ‘Oriya MN’ mostly throughout the whole of the book. This is quite a large font and easy to read therefore this was acceptable.

I never really used any effects in the book apart from when it came to colour overlay on the sky and I used the difference in colours being orange and dark blue to show sun set and sun rise. I never used any effects such as the cartoon effect as this would have made the characters and/or background look really unrealistic.

The colours ranged quite a bit both on the background and from character to character. They were never bright and bold colours but the outfits would consist of blues, yellows, browns and grey. The background was what a normal village and hills would typically look like with green grass, blue sky, brown and green tree etc. The sheep added more colour with their cream coloured wool and pink facial features. The think that added most colour was the village at the back of the scenes. Although it was far away and small in most on most of the pages, it is really obvious due to the colours used. These consisted of bright browns, reds, yellows, blues etc. Colours that were subtle but at the same time bright. The sky also had clouds on every page adding white so thee were also really obvious.

I used these colours as I didn’t want my book to be over loaded by brightness as this can put anyone of therefore I used more subtle colours that made a nice contrast with each other and worked well.

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

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

In a way I haven’t used signs, symbols or codes specifically. I think the only one I really meant to use was the colours of the villagers clothes as these are browns which were looked upon as poor colours that represent the working class. These are farmers and my book is set in an ancient era. One of the villagers wears the colour green and this would represent more of a richer colour than what brown and greys would represent. In my book we don’t actually see him working or carrying any sort of tool that would show he is a farmer therefore he may have a higher powered job so he could be a middle class character. Wearing a colour that is brighter than brown or grey such as green automatically makes people drawn to them more. As this character is wearing green it gives a more natural feel e.g. nature; grass. I think this may be why I used him as a higher powered character who calms the boy down when he is crying due to him seeing the wolf chase the sheep away. It was quite a natural thing for the man to do, almost like a father to son piece of advise on why he shouldn’t have done what he did.

The other villager is wearing a set of dungarees which is a piece of clothing that is used to work in, although this is not a dark colour e.g. brown or dark grey (although he does wear grey) he is still seen as a working class character because of what he is wearing and even though it’s blue which is quite a rich, pure colour many working class people used to wear this.

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

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

The main character (the shepherd) wears blue, white and yellow which are all seen as rich colours but again it’s like the villager who was wearing blue. This isn’t about what colours he wears but what he is wearing instead. The shepherd is wearing a robe with rope around to tie it and also wears brown sandals, this shows he is also working class as his job is to look after animals and they wouldn’t have got paid for that. We can also look at this in another way which is to actually look at the colours he is wearing. As he is wearing rich colours that would relate to upper class working people or royalty he would have power over everyone else. Sometimes when people get power over everyone or quite a lot of people stereotypically they become snooty, thinking they are better than everyone else who is under them. As well he doesn’t actually seem to be doing any sort of job apart from standing and watching some sheep so in a sense he doesn’t actually work. He can distract others (shouting to the villagers) but not get distracted himself. This is why he could be a higher powered character.

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?

There are all men, women and children in my book. The men and women are the three villages and the child is the main character being the shepherd. My book shows more stereotypical ways of living rather than what it would be like to live on a field in a small village.

The shepherd has always been a young boy in each children's book remake I have look at from the ages of around 8 to late teenager. This is the age range of mischievousness when people play tricks on others and it is heard more in boys than girls especially in the era I have made mine in. Girls are young, sweet, individuals that are taught to be proper where as boys are seen in groups or on there own but are always up to something that’s not good.

All my characters are white individuals being the era my book is set in, stereotypically the white females especially shouldn’t be working as they were stay at home mums and didn’t work. The black females should have been working as maids for the other families as this was the way people lived. In a way I briefly thought about this before I started making this as we now live in a different era and everything has changed, we are all slowly getting the same rights as each other so I thought that I should show women working as there is now no problem at all that women can do what was once seen as a males job.

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 chose for my book is more of a cartoon look but at the same time it’s not

cartooned enough to the extent of having the animals in the form of people as some books can do this. It’s not that I don’t like the idea but just because I already have humans in my book I think it would have looked wrongly and confusing especially for the young children.

I think my book is quite formal in a way too, to say it’s aimed at and for children it’s partly realistic in the way the characters act. Its not a simple, messaged book e.g. how counting books, word and colour books with objects in would be laid out and spoken about.

I’ve styled it in more of a cartoon way rather than having real looking sheep, people and scenes as most children prefer to watch, look at and read things that are in cartoon, things like Cinderella that is cartoon along with Snow White etc.

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 examplesThe planning and research of the books helped a lot. If I were to leave this part out I would

have struggled majorly. When researching I looked on websites e.g./ Amazon to look at the different type of children's books. This was really useful as it stated a lot about a single book e.g. how many pages it has (most around 12), what width and length the books are, who wrote/published it and what it was about. When looking at most children’s books most of them had around 10 – 12 pages but did differ in size although this didn’t matter as we could have chosen any size to have ours.

The planning was really good as I made mind maps, mood boards (of both pictures and text), I had peer feedback from how it all looked and the information I had collected, story boards and flat plans are also included.

My mind map was the first thing I did which consisted of seven different children’s books I had in mind that I would have liked to do, eight different ways I could have presented my text with further ideas coming off this and five different techniques in the way I could have made the book and again further ideas coming off this. After I typed down all my ideas on to my mind map then decided to join different parts up with others that could relate e.g. joining Three Billy goats gruff (book) up with photography (technique) and then explaining why I did this.

My mind map

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 examplesI think I managed my timing quite well to say there was a lot to do and I’m not too good at

keeping to a schedule as I think of new ideas, then want to add them to my product, this then takes up more time and I never usually finished what I planned the way I wanted It and on time. I typed out what I wanted to do and in what order, making myself stick to this. As I did this I did complete everything in the correct order. A few complications arose as I was making this book but there was bound to be, this did add a little extra time which I would have liked to not have but I finished it effectively and it was how I imagined it to be so I am happy with how it worked.

I think some of the weaknesses when in pre-production of the book was trying to figure out what techniques to use, as I had my mind set on shape warping I also had many other ideas like photography and drawing parts of it. I then had to think about how I would have included these in to my book and was quite excited to do it but rotoscoping turned out to be the best option.

Another weakness would probably be about choosing the book I was wanting to recreate as I had no idea what I wanted to do and this took up a little more time just choosing my main task.

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 book I recreated was The boy who cried wolf and this is an extremely popular book, folks tale and it’s been recreated in many different ways through books, television and by just bee spoken, not only because there are many different ending to this book but because people like to improvise and not copy the original, make It their own.

There are many different endings including; The boy gets eaten by a wolf, the sheep get eaten by the wolf, the sheep get chased away and eaten, the sheep just get chased away, both the boy and the sheep get eaten etc. So anyone who is to tell the story in any way (by mouth, in a book or on television) can choose how they want this story to end.

People could also change how the story goes slightly. They could change the setting e.g. it’s not a shepherd but could be someone else like a modern day worker who lies about what is happening, what he has being lying about has come true then in the end nobody believes him because he's a liar. Then something terrible happens to him. This is the message in the boy who cried wolf so all could be changed around.

This story is that popular that The Simpson’s (television series) did a remake of it. This is an example of having it being recreated through television.

Peer Feedback

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