Children's book evaluation

1. Graphic Narrative
Evaluation

2. Does your final product reflect your original intentions?
• Compare your planning/digital flat plans/ storyboards to your final product
For my children's book I did a lot of research and planning to come up with my final idea. My
final out come to the children's story was meet to what I wanted the final look to be like from
my flat plans and illustrations. I created the story by hand drawing all of my scenes and had to
use my judgment to the framing and portion sizes for the final designs.
My digital flats were all based of my actual designs for the final outcome for the story, so they
were simply a practice of illustrations for the background and characters as I struggled drawing
the aspect of my book. The final scripted for the story was very similar to the original story of
‘The Boy who cried wolf’, however I changed the perspective of the script so that it would fit
the actual story idea which was switching over the characters and purpose about still had the
same point of the story.
So instead of the boy cried wolf it would be the wolf who cried human. So I had to re fraise a
few sentences so that it would fit the character and purpose. However I originally intended to
use the font size of 12 with the actual font of ‘Optima’ with a faded stroke behind the text so
that it would stand out more to the viewer. However as I hand drew all of the scenes and
scanned them all onto Photoshop, they were all different scale sizes so this would affect the text
sizes, which would generally affect the final look of the text on specific pages. This was not what
I intended to consist in my work from my research purposes. I also notice from over looking my
story board, the scripted is different from the final scripted as I changed my ,mind regarding
aspect of the images and the about the amount of text on the page as I thought that I originally
had too much text for a children's book.

3. This was my my influence to help me on constructing
my ideas so I stayed on the same pattern and used the
correct features. It helped me in what I wanted to
happen in all scenes, the type of style in which I
wanted to follow and the design features that I wish
to ensure happened to each scene and that it
happened to all of the other scenes. This was
regarding text, colors and character development. I
did follow the mind map and I was again happy with
my final out come. This was same regarding my mood
board. This especially helped with character
developed as I researched a variety of wolves, styles
and humans. The top left of the mood boards shows
the wolves in cartoon form and real life form. If you
look right of the mood board you can get a clear look
of the actual look of the characters.

4. This is an example of the comparison between my design plans and the actual out come of
scenes 7 and 8. As you can tell some similarities to both design features have there were the
same but there were differences. I structured scene 7 differently to the flat plan design.
Changed the layout of both of these scenes so it would fit better on the page and that I
didn’t look like to going on. However I was very happy with the final out comes for my
designs as I followed the same flat plans designs and knew what I wanted from each design
feature.

5. How well have you constructed your images?
At first I was finding hard on how to construct my image as I wanted them to fit on to the page so that they
had some sort of relation to the text. After researching a lot of professional work of children's book I found a
book in which I could explore the deign layout. The book was Curious George. The designer for the book laid
out the image and text on there own pages , images were different in size as it was in relation to the text
pasted on the other page. The text was separated so it was in line with a specific image in relation to that
piece of narrative. The book is very good on a visual appearance as the text is placed next to the image
making it clear for the view to read and look at specific. This is the same technique that I wanted to include
in my book as well. . In my book I wanted to carry out the same process in the design ideas. In my book I
made the images all cover all space on one page and if there was a split in one page (two scenes in the same
text formation) then I designed it so the viewer can clearly see what scene match the text and action. I also
made it for these to have the text separated to each making it clear.
I think over looking the final product, I think that it worked really well regarding style and variety of color,
because keeping to these aspects for a book with loads of illustration is very important. However I think that
if I had more time spending time on the illustration and editing that I would improve the lack of quality to
the background and the characters. I would do this by drawing on more patterns so I could select a color
that was lighter or darker to make the part of the illustrations stand out more. For example for my first
scene, for one of the trees in the background, I drew inside the tree another pattern and filled in the gap
with a lighter color to the trees actual entire color, give a but a depth of field to that specific aspect.
Regarding color, I used a variety of colors in which the true look of characters, location etc… The time set of
the book is at night, however I still used the color in which what the aspects would be like when during the
day as I wanted it to be easy for the young viewers to know what is what and can clearly see what is what.
My method to making my book was using my drawing skills to making the actual designs and scanning them
onto Photoshop where I used several effects like the paint bucket tool and adjustments levels bar to control
the over look of the images. I like the over visual appearance because as a drew my aspects I was not limited
to what I wanted my characters to look like and the the time that I could have been taken up longer to
created if I used the method of roto scoping.

6. This is an professional strand comparison to my book ‘Steven the Wolf’ and ‘ Curious George’. As
you can see I used the same visual layout from Curious George as I have in this specific scene
split up two scenes onto one page and have the text spread out to help the viewer link the text
and image together to make the story follow fast. I have also used the same hand drawn use
that I used in my book. I also used the designer fro curious George idea of using bright colors so
that it creates a large field of depth.

7. How well have you used text to anchor your images• You should talk about
the combination of
words, images and
text.
In the creation process of the story, I planned to write out the text and script before working on the
illustrations for the actual pages content. For this I found the original tale on the internet and and write
down the most important quotes and parts for creating the story and as I was working for a story for 9 pages
I would have to shorten the story that it made sense and still have the proper meaning at the end. As this
was set to be a children's book I had to include that when breaking down the text I would have to make sure
that it made sense for young viewers
After breaking down the story in the specific scenes that I required I then wrote down the illustrations break
down which requires what to feature in all illustration scenes e.g. lighting, characters, position, props and
location/background. Before drawing out the actual versions of my scenes it drew flat plans of simple artistic
illustrations to see weather the drawing would help match the words and that it would make it look good
regarding layout and combinations. Every illustrations that I drew for the 9 pages I felt reflected of what the
story was telling for that scene and that I would have a appropriate amount of text for each pages that does
it purpose but is readable for a young viewer. For example on page 2 it simple introduces the main wolf
Steven and describing who he was, I wrote the smallest amount of text and created a simple illustration to
keep the viewer attention to the main character details as this was important through out my book.
However for pages 7,when Steven is getting chased through the woods and is full of action and tension
there is a lot of text as I split two scenes into the layout of one page, so it was busier and there were
different angles used to create a tension (medium shots). For scenes 5 and 7 I used the technique of splitting
the scenes up into the layout of 1 page as purely the story content was too much so as there have been
loads of children's stories that split the images. It works and it a good technique to keep the viewers
attention as there are a lot going on. I used this method to purely hurry the story quicker and the keep
tension up. With these scene the text content for that specific page/image I created a big gap in between the
text so that you know which part of words go with what scene. I used the text coding for this purpose.

8. Is your product suitable for your audience?
At the beginning of the task I was given the task to create a children's book of any sort and style but that
must be aimed for a specific age group. The brief set by the producer stated that my book must be suitable
for the ages 3-8 as that is the general age group for children's books of all genres. I believe that my children's
book falls into the category due to the lots of cartoon aspects that makes the story appeal to this audiences
well as the style that I have used which was representation art style. However I changed the story around
from the original tale of the boy who cried wolf, as I changed the symbolism of the story to have the wolf
becoming the main character. I did this becomes sometimes audience members enjoys looking at animals in
cartoon form more then human as they like to look at them at a different way then looking at cartoon
formed humans.
However when creating and planning my children's book, I again changed it which meant changing the
target audience as I changed it in which could not be suitable for young viewers. I changed the story so that
Steven who cried human, would get chased by an actual human and then ends up being killed. My original
plan and stenches in scene 9 would show Stevens wolf pack members looking over his body. This then
increase the graphic nature of my book contain a dead animal body at the end and containing blood as well.
This book would not be sensible for the ages 3-8 years old, so at that point of planning I then would have to
increase the audience to 7-9 years old. Also if I kept that final ending scene in and that was my final which
meant that the buyer (adults mainly) would not be impress by the book as would not want their kids to have
dead animals pictured in their head while being read to. So for publishing purposes and sensibility reason I
again changed the final out come. I still had Steven’s life ending by the human, however I did not show any
graphic nature ( dead bodies), this would then fall back into the sensible age group of 3-8 years old. However
still having the main character dying at the end does make the ending feel depressing and sad, but it does
give a clear message to the viewer the lying is never a good thing.

10. What do you like/dislike about the techniques you have used?
As I have stated before the type of creative technique that I used was using my very own illustrations and
using them on the computer colouring in the gaps. First of all with my illustrations I had I hand drawn every
single character, location and page layout. The reason why I using this technique was because I found that
hand drawing everything made it a lot easier when approaching detail and visual layout. I then had to scan
each scene onto the computer and used an editing program called Adobe Photoshop where I did all of my
editing processes. The first thing that I did in photo shop was cropping down the page so that I would only
have the correct page layout. I then went into adjustments>levels and changed the variety of colour of black,
grey and white on the page. I did this so that the black out lines on the page would become the most
dominating colour on the page and make everything stand out. However this was a area in which I dis liked
from using it. Hand drawing allowed me to add detail to everything, but changing the levels sometimes got
rid those small details and also sometime lost the entire overall colour of the black making it not look good
when filling in the gaps with colour. The main reason why I like the technique that I used was because it was
the quickest technique to use as I had loads of aspects to complete in a short time. Editing of Adobe
Photoshop opened up windows for my creation as I used loads of tools and effects to create the final look of
my children's book. Some examples that I used were the paint bucket tool which was my main source of
colouring gin the gaps with selected colours. I also used the paint brush tool in three different ways. One was
simply using the brush to go over the black drawing lines in which I originally drew so that they would stand
out more. I would normally have the size of the brush for these purposes around 2 as it was the closes size
to match the pencil out lines on the scan. Second was an air brush. This was one of my favourite tools to use
in the production. This allowed to to dark specific areas of the picture creating more of the field of depth an
making the images look more realistic and interesting. I mainly used this around moon as in movies we can
sometimes see darken areas around it due the the brightness of the moon being bright. The last type of
brush that I loved using fro the grass brush tool. On my original scan I had already drew on the grass out
lines, however when we change the levels of the scan, they lost quality and fade away, so I used this type of
brush to create my own set of grass, of a selected colour or where to put. This allowed my final looked of the
book to look smart and colourful and allowed the characters to look more realistic and make the story look
more alive.

11. What do you like/dislike about how your final product looks?
I really like the final look of my image. To be honest I thought my final visual appearance was
going to very poor as I was not the best person for illustrations, however I did a lot of practice
regarding this matter so that I would have the best detail illustrations for detail. I like that my
style that I used was very simple, so that I could follow the style through out all of my pages and
not leaving any thing out to make it different. The main aspect of the final product look is the
variety of colors that I used in each scene. I did repeat most of the colors as my story was a
single strand story line as it all takes in one night so color would be the same as also there is
only one background. So for example the sky would change most of the time. I used different
levels of the colors to add more texture to features of the book as it makes the book look more
alive the the young viewers opinion.
However even though I my main thought to my book is positive I must admit the dislikes and the
aspects that I found difficult to create the final product look. As I selected to scan my images
onto Photoshop, I had to make the drawing out lines become the most main outlines when
adding the colors with the paint bucket tool. However as I was not the best at using Photoshop I
struggled to use this use to my advantage, so to proceed I had to simply just use the
adjustments>levels to make the black illustrations become the strongest color in the images.
However due to the increase of this it got rid of some of the main illustration elements that help
make the character and background look better and advanced the colors eventually making
them link well together. Due to this I would then have to use the paint brush tool to over draw
the detail aspect in which was lost in the level changes. Most of the times doing this the final
look after redrawing would ruin the actual hand drawn look to the illustration.
However generally I believe that if I had more time editing and focusing on the texture for the
characters mainly then on a professional standard could be published for the public.

12. Why did you include the content you used?• Images, fonts, effects, colours
Image-As I have stated before the type of technique that I have used was simply using my own illustrations,
scanning them onto photo shop to edit through the gaps to make it colour and professional to become a full
children's book. I decided to do this technique I thought that my skills on Photoshop were not as good as
some others work so I used this way to complete the look of my book to be on a high level of work and to
have that similar look to that its original and suitable for a children's book.
Fonts- The all of the text that was contained in the book, I used the the font contained on Photoshop ‘
Optima’. I selected this font to use through out my book as I did research in relation to the text as the type of
font is important when creating a book. One of the most important aspects is text legibility. This is
important because it relates to picking a font which is warm, friendly design with simple, generous letter
shape. This allows the young viewers read easier and looks like a book which is suitable for their reading
level. Another important aspect is the size of your font. Young readers have to learn to follow words from
left to right so keeping the text and with shorter sentences can improve their reading capability. Keep line
lengths short, and don’t put too much text on a page. However when I have a lot more text on specific pages
(split scene pages) the text size is at a bigger size so that the viewer wont be put off as there are more text. I
used these affects to make the young audience this is an proper children's story with a specific nice meaning.
I overall used the font ‘Optima’ and the size of the font of 12 in the regular effect (not bold).
Effects- Regarding text, to keep the simple and easy style I places and effect on all of the words to make
them all stand out and making the text look pure in relation to the images next to them. I placed a small
‘Stroke’ filter under the text to achieve this task. However it was only a small size (small bold outline) of 1 as
the bigger the stroke the less affect that it had on the book and ruined the over look. For all of my scans I
changed the levels of the entire image to make the actual page have no damage looked, rubbed out
sketches, and no real life look of paper as I wanted it to be like a real look book with nothing to make it look
like a originally drew it by hand.
Colours- I did lots of research regarding colour in children's books. I used a variety of dark as the setting for
the book is set at night time periods. However I designed the images to contain brighter colours as well as
bright colour stand out more to young readers than dark colours. I used brighter because bright colours are
are more likely to start connecting what the viewers see in the books with what they see in real life. The

13. 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.
In my opinion, there are not many main aspects to my book that can be related to the clear symbols.
However I have noticed some small symbols and signs in relation to the style of colour that I've used and
design features as well. The first one is that in scene 8 it is an long shot of the location (woods) saying the
words “Bang” portrayed in bright colours. The original sketch for this scene was another split scene of the
British Solider killing Steven the wolf. But because this is a children's story it would seem inappropriate to
mention this showcase in graphic detail for a friendly wolf being shot. Instead a drew just the location with
the words “bang” over the woods. This word symbolises horror, shock, disappointed and sad. This also help
sum up the endings meaning. The other types of symbolism actually comes within the clothing of the
solider. He is wearing a red uniform. The colour red is normally a symbol or colour of danger, which also
symbolises blood and gore. However that was not the the intentional idea for the use of the colour as I was
copying the uniform of the 17th century British army. In historical terms this is a colour which is no longer
used in the British army, which does symbolise the old army and the really English look. However I used this
colour for the villain to make the character stand out. Regarding more about the characters, the main
character and side characters are wolves and as I have changed the story around so it is at the wolves point
of view. I designed this so the wolves would have more emotion as in children's books it is the humans with
most attention and emotion. I designed the wolves and entire book to be in the style of cartoon. The wolves
look very cartoony and they all look non aggressive and cute like, as normally we see them lot as tense
angry specie. Due to this look it symbolise them to be the good guys in my book as they don’t look bad and
not style of colours on them in which symbolises trouble. Location. There is only one location in the book
and that is the woods. We normally think that the location of woods is assumed dangerous, dark , evil, scary
and creepy. This is due to that old fairy tales portray the way that we don’t like the look of the woods and
never want our hero's to go near or in them. There is a bit of action in which takes place in my book,
however the actual time and setting is at night. Night symbolise scary, dark, tense and frightening and that
everyone hates being in the dark and when Steven the wolf is getting chase through the woods at night
makes the story frightening and horrible as we hate the fact that Steven’s visibility is reduce and that the
woods also make it even more scary for the viewer.

15. 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?
In my story I had based it off from the original tale of the boy who cried wolf. In relation to characters mine
has not as many characters development from the old tale. The characters that I do have in my story
however are Steven the wolf, three other members of his family pack and one human in which is portrayed
as the baddy and villain in our story. In the tale that I based off, there are a larger proportion of characters
as they have an entire group villagers to help the boy from the wolf. This consist of the mum and father of
the Shepard boy, old man who tells the truth to the boy and the village mayor. . As I twisted the story around
from the Steven the wolfs point of view, I could of created a larger pack of wolves portraying his family
however I wanted to focus on detail and the story with just a few main characters. However to my newly re
formed story of the old tale, my story characters do have an un balanced effect in relation to gender. If the
viewer thought about it in a lot of detail then they could class my book to be sexist as the main wolf is male,
the hunter is male and two of the other wolves in Stevens pack are boys. Its is difficult to tell about the other
wolves however as they do not have selected names. I do agree that my book does not portray enough
female characters but I would include more female roles if I had more time to work on the planning side of
this production. Regarding religion, there are not many religious aspects that do appeal, however if I kept to
the original story in which includes a town, does portray the religious look of Christianity as some books do
have the villages living with a church in the middle of the village. There are also characters in the original tale
that are fathers of the church that come to help the boy when he cries for help with the wolf. However in my
story, I included no church's of any religion or any characters to symbolise the religion. However there are
religions that disagree with the meaning of violence and death, so from original plan of at the end having
Stevens dead body being shown to the viewers then my book would not be suitable for some religions as
they are against the act for death. My story is also very little on detail regarding age, race and social groups
as I didn’t explore location or the quality of the personal side of characters. With this standing I believe that
my book would be suitable for any race, social group or specific ages. However my main character Steven is
the one character that I have created its own representation. I have showcased that Steven is very lazy,
funny, trouble making, interesting, laid back, care free and also very self centred. The British soldiers

17. 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?
For children's book, it was difficult for me to get a sense of ideas for me to produce the main
task of my main idea. When coming up with the ideas for my children's book, I wanted it to be
in relation to hand drawn illustrations and simple stenches but have a great effect on the viewer
as it shows to them the creative minds behind the story and illustrations. My main influences
was the 1941 children's book ‘Curious George’. This was of my favourite children's book when I
was young as I mainly loved the illustration and variety of use of colours. I wanted to follow a
similar style of illustration but as I was not the best at drawing animals. The was the book that
gave me the influences of changing around the story of the boy that cried wolf to the wold who
cried human, because it curious George, George is the main character and he presented as a
naughty and interesting monkey and show I changed it around in my story as it worked really
well in curious George. This was also the book that made up my mind about using my illustration
skills to create the story as so much detail was into the characters and backgrounds. I discovered
that the type of style involved in Curious George was representation art visual style. This style
represent actual objects or subjects from reality, however as this was a children's book task I
used the illustrations for Curious George to make my characters and background look more in a
cartoon form as it would appeal more to the viewers. Another influence on my illustrations and
layout for my book was ‘The Hungry Caterpillar’. This was a book which was well known for the
variety of its text that it stretches to and the illustrations that are suitable for young viewers.
This was my main influence for using a main variety of colours, as the hungry caterpillar has so
many illustrations and use for bright colours.

19. 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
Planning and pre production played a massive part for me to accomplish my children's book. I researched a lot
of information that helped me get ideas and plans for me to create my final production. I used lot of pre
production planning which allowed me to break down specific elements and see weather it would fit in my
story. I created a mood board which consisted of a variety of images. This helped me decided what I wanted
my children's book to look like in relations to characters, locations and time period. This also gave me the
influence to draw out my sketches as well as other influences like the children's book “Curious George’.
Planning out all of my scenes before producing was a brilliant move that I made. This was because if I did not
plan out the scenes and places what aspects went in those scenes, then I would have taken longer to create
the book in total as I would have rushed it and changed some scenes in which could slow down an entire
production. I went in a lot of research regarding the original tale of the boy who cried wolf and from research
from http://childrensbooksguide.com/color , it discussed about how young viewers prefer to read children's
books that contain animals more than humans, so with this fact, I decided to switch over the story so it is the
wolf to be the main character and to speak and mess around with his family pack. Research also helped me
come to conclusion about the proper age group that I should focus towards. With the help of
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/age-levels-for-childrens-books.html , it allowed me to understand
what sort of book mine needed to be in relation to the brief and what would be best for the audience which is
3-8 years old. It also showed me the success rate of children's books that contain a graphic nature had dropped
in popularlaity in the age group as parents did not want their children reading a book with graphic nature by
10% last year. Regarding time that I had to manage in this entire project, I believe that I manage it really well.
Before I started the editing I had created a time plan for the 10 sessions and planned that in every two sessions
as I would always being busy and it would give time to spend enough time on each time scene on editing and
changing anything that didn't’t not work. I planed this way so that I would have enough time at the end if I had
finished early then it could give me time and go over and check all of the scenes so that they all fit the

20. 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?
Steven the Wolf is a book in which is based off the 16th tale of The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Since it
was told a story told ages ago, and if they were true events loads of authors and companies
have taken the old tale to changed into several children's stories. However who ever told the
tale at first is no more then the copy right rule does not own to anyone and is able to used by
any one. However I researched a lot of the many authors and their own version of the tale and
about 75% of the them are very similar but different in style and scheme. For example you have
Tony Ross’s version (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Boy-Who-Cried-Wolf/dp/1842708333)
Mairi Mackinnon version (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Boy-Who-Cried-Wolf-devices-
ebook/dp/B00K1XTJGM)
B.G. Hennessy version (https://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Cried-
Wolf/dp/0689874332?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0 )
My book is not like the many versions of the story. I did my research and found no version of of
the story being swapped so the wolf being the main character. So I planned out my story it was
the Wolf crying human instead. This would make my story stand out from the hundreds of
different versions of the original story as it is different and creates a different meaning to the
viewer. I also kept to the original tale involving a death of the main character but due to parental
issues and graphic nature problems I did not show it in the final outcome. However if I was to
compare my product with the three existing products (above) is that they all have a similar
design features. All of the images in these three books all contain images in which is formed in
the representation visual style meaning there are all in cartoon form representing actual living