Harry Richardson

1. Graphic Narrative
Evaluation

2. 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.

3. Does your final product reflect your
original intentions?
• Compare your planning/digital flat plans/
storyboards to your final product
During planning I said that my idea was to create a variation of the straw millionaire which is old
Chinese tale about a peasant that traveled across the land with a cart of straw and as he traveled
traded his straw with different people and kept trading over and over until he had gotten a castle. I
changed this story by adding a sci-fi twist to the story. I did this as the target audience is male children
aged from 4-7 and this sci-fi theme was chosen due to this. A boy aged 4-7 are normally the age when
they begin watching cartoons and TV a lot more and as such they would be watching things like
transformers or power rangers where this choice comes from.
Inside my Digital flat plan the theme can be seen easily and I used some of the more friendly and nicer
looking robots in it to try and create a more soft or welcoming feeling than some of the other options I
could have Used and made.
Comparing these to my Final product shows that I followed my digital flat plan quite closely with the
position of the characters and to some extent the backgrounds in the pages however the backgrounds
do change a bit from the flat plan with their appearance but the location stays similar in the end like
them being in a street or garage. The reason behind me changing the look of the backgrounds from

4. the flat plan was due to changes in what I wanted them to look like. An example was page 3 where in
the flat plan is a wide open road with a wall on one side and a road on the other however during
production I wanted to create a slightly more claustrophobic atmosphere with the background and as
such used a background that has walls on both sides but is still slightly open and I can still fit a
reasonable amount of contents into the background.
Another difference is the characters that have become a lot different from their flat plan counterpart.
This is due to choice changes during production and restrictions that I ran into during production.
There was a large problem that made me struggle with the construction of characters and that was
that I needed to make them different. When creating a children's book characters need to be unique,
it needs to be easy to tell all characters apart and the easiest way to do that without repeating assets
is to create unique characters even if that means that more time is absorbed by its development.

5. 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 think that the construction of my images is quite good however there are a number of
errors and problems that I have with each of my images, these can be anything from the
color scheme being wrong or just looking off, to the general shapes that are used in the
images not looking very natural. Overall the images don’t look horrible however I
personally don’t think that they are the best they could have been. Some of the problems I
have with my images originate from the colors, this is because a lot of the colors are quite
bland and dark which doesn't give off the impression of that of a children's book and when
I experimented with the colors to try and make it brighter like other children's books I had
problems finding colors that worked well with the backgrounds and other elements of the
page without clashing quite abruptly.

6. Page 2:
In this page we have texture
on practically every single
object like the walls, window
and cupboard. The textures on
the walls and wood is very
easy to see and it looks
reasonably ok however when
looking at the window the
texture isn't seen very much
and people probably wouldn't
realize if the texture was
removed all together. This is a
problem as the window then
begins clashing with the rest
of the image. This creates an unwanted and jarring contrast that the image would best do
without. Next there would be the character within the page. The character is a large point of
the image that I am unhappy with, this is because I wasn’t really happy with any of the
characters that I had created before and over the course of production I created multiple
different character designs and looks but in the end I didn't have the time to be fussy and
selected the last one that created and I was happiest with and continued on with the
production as I didn't have time to be fussy as the deadline for the finished product was
approaching I settled with this character to try and finish production before the deadline.

7. How well have you used text to anchor
your images
• You should talk about the combination of
words, images and text.

9. 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 say that my audience is 4-7 year old boys. This is because of the sci-fi
decision on my part. With this I made the creative decision to make the characters into
robots and at the ages of 4 to about 10 children usually start watching shows like
transformers which might make the appeal of a story about them slightly better then other
demographics.
Things such as audience profile are quite hard for children as you cant focus on subjects like
income or household like you can with adults. This means that the profile will boil down to
much less things than normal, it will become a list of things like class, lifestyle and
education. Because of this the profile will quite bare with things like they are starting
primary school and they live in council houses or live in apartment buildings.

10. Age:4-7
Gender: Male
Education: Nursery - Primary School
Occupation: Student
Likes: Robots
Audience Profile
The Audience profile above is very bare bone as I personally don’t really know what else to
add to it that would apply to a child. Things such as sexual orientation, ethnic background,
economic group and psychographic groups aren't applicable to a child's book but also aren't
applicable to children as an audience which creates problems when writing an audience
profile.

11. What do you like/dislike about the
techniques you have used?
• Reference specific tools you used with images
Tools:
• Shape Tools - (Rectangles, Ellipse, Etc.) Create Shapes which are used to create props
and characters for the story.
• Polygonal Selection Tool - Select areas of an image to create copies of the selection in
different layers that can then be edited. This is use when rotoscoping.
• Clipping Masks - This is used in conjunction with opacity to give objects texture and
make them look more interesting.
• Free Transform - Used to manipulate the size of the different components of the
image to fine tune the look of the image.
• Distort - Like free transform it allows for the editing of shapes however with distort
you can edit where each corner of a shape is and the general shape of the shape.
• Color Overlay - Used to change the color of an object into a desired color, this is to
make the shapes and assets in the image look a specific way to fit the image and
vision.
• Rasterize - This is to make shapes created with the rectangle or ellipsis tool into a
layer instead of a live shape which allows editing and overlays to be done to them.

13. What do you like/dislike about how
your final product looks?
I believe that the images have a fair few problems that might have been able to make better,
many of these problems originate from the colors or shapes within the different assets of
the pages. This can be seen in background 5 from the book and understand what I mean.
The image below is background 5 and it is clearly visible that the background could use a lot
more work with things like shape and color. This is seen in the walls and ceiling as the beams
across the ceiling are wonky and don’t look natural and coupled with the textures on the
beams walls and ceiling it looks very un natural and looks like it needs a lot more work until
it can become a decent background that
doesn't clash within itself however with the
deadline approaching I had to try and finish
the book to a certain degree before the
deadline had passed.

15. Why did you include the content you
used?
• Images, fonts, effects, colours
Effects:
• Using different effects like color overlays, gradient overlays, image opacity, Clipping
masks. These different tools were used to create different visual styles and looks on
different objects in the images / pages. Things like color and gradient overlays are used
to change the color or general look of the object/layer in the image. Opacity and clipping
masks are used to apply a texture to the layers that have been edited with color overlays
to add a slightly more interesting look to the image.
Colors:
• The colors aren't as bright as they should be for a children's book. The majority of the
colors are quite dark and aren't very child friendly, this was an oversight on my part
during production. I chose a Sci-Fi theme but I began using much duller colors than I
planned on using in my book. This rises problems and things that should be fixed within
the images and pages because at the current time the characters and backgrounds are
quite bland colors and that really drags the whole visual style and look down.

16. Images:
• Using the images like streets and garages was a decision I made because the story is sci-fi
themed as stated in the proposal so the areas would be more futuristic or urban than a
generic fairy tale setting.
Font:

17. What signs, symbols or codes have
your used in your work?
• Choices of colour, style, locations, character
design and tone all give additional meaning to
your work.
Color – The colors in my work is very bland and isn't very interesting as I've said before
however with the majority of the color being grey or bland makes the highlights of bright
colors like blue much more impactful without doing much to them other than make them
contrast or clash with the characters and backgrounds.
Style -
Locations -
Character Design -
Tone -

18. Style -
Locations -
Character Design -
Tone -

19. Audience Responses
Cultural competence:
Media texts require us to have a certain level of cultural understanding to
be able to interpret them.
At a basic level, this could mean being able to read the language that a
magazine is written in.
At a deeper level, it means being able to interpret signs and symbols that
we use a visual shorthand to communicate ideas.
We recognise these signs in our own culture but find it harder to
understand when looking at others.
We create and attach meaning to signs and symbols in many different
forms.
19Creative Media Production 2012

20. Audience Responses
Cultural competence:
What is this?
This is a Norwegian Pine tree, covered in
snow and with a red ribbon on.
Our cultural understanding allows us to
interpret its meaning.
To us, in British society, it means
Christmas, presents and family.
This is because we share a cultural
knowledge.
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21. Audience Responses
Cultural competence:
There are many other signs and symbols
that we attach meaning to.
A leather jacket can imply rebellion.
A sports car can imply wealth and power.
A cross can represent religion.
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22. Audience Responses
Cultural competence:
Visual representations of everyday objects are often the same the world
over. A car appears as a car, no matter what country it appears in.
What that car means however, can be very different depending on your
cultural background.
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23. 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?
Because of the characters being robots and not people there cant be any any real
representing of races or religions due to this. They are simple designs that have no real
defining features that can be said to be references to things like race or religion.

25. 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?

27. 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

29. 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?

31. Peer Feedback
• Summarise peer feedback and discuss
– Responses you agree with
– Responses you disagree with