The document provides guidance for evaluating a project using a template. It instructs the user to provide specific details about their work, including written and visual examples to explain the project. The user should find areas of their work to praise, being specific about what is good or what they are proud of. They should also find areas for improvement, specifying what could be better if revisited. Additional slides can be added as needed, and any blank slides should be deleted before submission.

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
• Before making my final product I first planned what I was going to include in terms of characters,
settings, narrative etc. Firstly I created a mind map to set out my initial ideas, I used the mind map to
brainstorm ideas for how I was going to adapt and modernise the story I had found I included a
summary of the original story and characters and settings from the original story, this helped me
brainstorm ideas on how I could adapt certain details of the original story and show the areas that I had
changed for example I changed the ‘witch’ from the original story into a businessman as I felt this would
help modernise the story, I feel that the mind map gives a good representation of my final product,
especially with the character details in terms of clothes, hair colour and personality all of which I
incorporated into my final character design. After creating my mind map I started on my mood board, I
used the information that I had come up with to find images online that resembled the characters and
settings I had included In my mind map, the images I found also gave me inspiration for the characters
and locations I wanted to create in my final product, the mood board also included different font styles I
was hoping to use and textures I wanted to incorporate within the objects I was going to include in my
book, such as trees and houses. I feel that my mood board mostly reflects my final product apart from
one character (the donut) that I did not incorporate into the final product due to limited page number
allowance. I then incorporated my ideas from both the mind map and the mood board to create a hand
drawn story board which I used as a base to help me create my digital flat plan of each page, to create
my digital flat plan I gathered a selection of images from the internet and created pages based on my
story board, this allowed me to add more detail and therefore give me a better idea of my final pages, I
feel that my digital flat plan reflects my final product well as I created most of the objects and settings
myself so was able to use them in my final product.

4. Page 1 flat plan Page 1 final product

5. Mood board images

6. The two
brothers
The two
brothers
The two brothers
The two brothers
The two brothers
Mood board images

7. 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.
• In the first few weeks leading up to the planning and making of my book, I experimented with different
methods of character creation on Photoshop such as rotoscoping and shape tasks. When creating my
characters for my final product I wanted to create a realistic animated look this is why I used
rotoscoping, this allowed me to create detailed body parts for my characters such as arms legs and torso
as I was able to rotoscope the certain shading areas necessary which gave my characters more of a real
look. I used shapes to create the facial features of the characters such as the eyes and mouths, although
I regret not adding more detail to the faces of the characters as I think some small shading in areas
could bring out the realism in order to make the characters and therefor the book look more
professional. I used shapes to create the objects included in my pages such as the houses and fences, I
added textures within the shapes to give the objects a more realistic look and help the viewer see what
the object was in more detail, to stay within the animated theme I added filters to the textures which
gave them a more animated look. Which I felt would suit better with the young target audience.

9. How well have you used text to anchor your
images• You should talk about the combination of words, images and text.
• I feel that the words I used make it easy for the target audience of 3-6 year olds to understand and on most
pages describe the illustrations of what is actually going on relatively well. Although I feel I did not always
fully illustrate all of my text as on some pages I seem to talk about more than just what it going on on that
certain page, for example on page 5 I describe how the boy is cleaning the house when he comes across all
the money and the businessman is sleeping but he wakes up, due to having limited page numbers and not
wanting to clutter the page with many different illustrations I am not able to illustrate the full scene and I'm
left to only illustrate the brother running away. I used text boxes in the bottom corner of the pages to show
how the story continues onto the next page this with the use of dots at the end of the sentence helps guide
the children through the book, I also did this to space out the writing on the page and make it look as if there
were less just in case the younger children feel overwhelmed by the amount of writing they see all together
which could lad to them losing interest in the book altogether. I used the colours black and white for my text
as I thought these two colours would stand out against the different shades on each page and the two simple
change in colours would not confused the children like if I were to do all different colours for the text on each
page such as blue and orange.

10. Is your product suitable for your audience?
• Reference your proposal
• Give an audience profile and describe suitability in reference to content
• In the planning process before producing my final product I write up a proposal regarding my target audience
such as who it will be and why my book will intrigue them, I proposed that my target audience would be 3-6
year olds, I chose this age as my book has a slightly detailed story line and is well illustrated which I think will
keep the children intrigued and making the book easy to follow, meaning that they will not get bored or
confused causing them to lose interest, I also feel that the words I have involved in the book are easy for
children of these ages to understand. As the main characters involved in the story are two boys then it suggests
that the book will capture the interest of a more male audience as they can relate to it in this way, but I did not
create the book with a certain gender preference and hope that it appeals to all genders. As I stated in my
proposal the book I have made is an adaption of an old English fairy tale which traditionally would suit an
audience of middle class family’s as they are known to like old fashioned fairy tales, but as I have adapted the
storyline I feel I have made it suit to any class but as the product is aimed toward children then I feel the
demographics do not really apply. A main piece of content within my book is helping people and how if you are
kind to others then others are kind to you and that you should always help people, this is shown on pages 3 and
6 of my book when one of the brothers helps a car and later in the story that car helps him by giving him a lift, it
is also shown on pages 10 and 13 when the other brother refuses to help an old lady and when it comes to him
needing hep of her she refuses as he was rude to her and so the brother is caught by the businessman,
highlighting the fact that you should help people. Stealing is also shown in my book on pages 5 and 12, but
stealing is not praised as the brothers are both shown the repercussions of their actions, which I added in order
to highlight the fact to the young audience that stealing is always wrong.

11. What do you like/dislike about the techniques
you have used?
• Reference specific tools you used with images
• When illustrating my book I mainly used techniques tools which were, rotoscoping, shapes and filter gallery.
• I used the filter gallery technique when creating my background and objects within the background such as
houses and trees I mainly used this method for the textures I used on my background objects to try and give
them a more cartoon look, for example I used brick textures for the buildings and wood textures for the
trees. I would do this by first downloading an image of a texture from the internet, I would then place the
texture over an object I had made from using the shape tool (U) after that I would select the layer containing
the texture and select create clipping mask this would then place the texture image within the object, as the
texture images were real they looked out of place amongst my other illustrations so I would then select filter
gallery and change the level settings, giving the texture a more cartoon look. I liked using this method as it
was an easy way of making my texture fit in with the rest of the images on my page and the coincide with the
books cartoon theme, it was also easy to repeat as the settings stayed the same every time I used the filter
so I if I wanted to give the cartoon look to another texture I would simply select it and then select last filter
(^cmdF).

12. I also used the shape tool (U) technique, I would use this technique in order to create illustrations of smaller body parts for my
characters such as fingers, eyes and mouths, I also used this technique to create the background objects such as houses and trees.
When using the shape tool to create detailed features for my characters I would first download an image from the internet in order to
use it as a sort of stencil, I would then chose the type of shape best fitted for the image for example, rounded rectangle or ellipsis, after
placing the shape over the image I would decrease the opacity of the shapes layer so I cold see through it making it easier to form the
shape over the image, I would then use the erase tool (E) to give more detail to certain areas. When making the background objects
such as the houses and trees I would create the different shapes and them place them together in order to make the final image, I
would then use the clipping mask feature to add certain textures to the shapes, giving them the final detail they needed for a
more professional look. I liked to use the shape tool technique as it was easy to use in order to get the basic shape of an object, using
the warp tool then gave me the ability to create more detailed illustrations instead of just basic shapes.
The main method I used to create my illustrations is rotoscoping, this technique consists of downloading an image off of the internet, I then
use the lasso tool (L) to select any area from the image that I wish to use for my illustrations such as a piece of clothing or a body part, after
selecting the area I right click and choose layer via copy, once I have a copy of the area I use the colour overlay tool to choose the colour I
want the area to be. I like to use this technique as it makes it easy to get the detail necessary for my illustrations to look professional for
example it enables me to add the creases and shading of the clothes to give them a more realistic look.
Download picture
Select certain area with polygon lasso tool
Go to colour overlay and
select the colour
Repeat process for final product

13. What do you like/dislike about how your final product looks?
• When first starting this section of the course I was not to confident with how I was going to do as I felt I did not have
the right skills to create professional looking illustrations on Photoshop but as the course went on I quickly learned
the easy steps to take in order to produce satisfying images from scratch. Now that I have finished the production
and illustration of my book I am happy with the final product as I feel it looks professional and I think it reaches the
standards of a real children's book that is sold in shops. The part of the mainly worried about was the making of the
characters as I felt I didn't’t have the right skills or the time to produce detailed illustrated representations of what I
had described in my pre production work, but through the use of techniques such as shaping and rotoscoping I was
easily able to create what I think are well detailed characters and as I started to progress in the creation of my
characters it became easier and easier as I was able to use parts of characters that I had previously made and use
them to piece together other characters in my story for example I used the legs of my main characters on multiple
characters as I found this part of the body hardest to illustrate, doing this really sped up the creation process and
gave me more time to focus on other key areas of my book. I also like how I have used textures to give my objects a
more detailed look making them look more professional and helping illustrate some of the text giving the viewer a
better idea of what is happening, for example on page one the storyline talks about how the crops on the farm aren't
growing which is a key piece of narrative for starting up the story so in attempt to properly illustrate what was
happening I added the texture of distressed muddy ground which I think had all the proper elements in order for it
to look detailed and match the description of what was happening in the text. I feel like I could've spent more time
on the trees, especially the shape of them I found it had to get the proper rugged shape of a real tree and instead on
some pages they seem to look almost blocky and therefore unprofessional especially on pages two, ten and thirteen,
but through the use of textures I feel I have slightly made up for the detail lost in the actual shape of the tree itself.

14. Why did you include the content you used?
• Images, fonts, effects, colours
• I chose for the text to be on the same page as the illustrations as I had a certain page allowance and did not
want to exceed the limit number of pages to much, as if the book were to be too long then children who are
reading it could become bored easier, I positioned my text on top of the illustrations on each page I made
sure to not overlap any vital illustrations such as my characters and only place my text on open areas, this
way it was easy to stay with the colours black and white for my text as these colours easily stood out against
both dark and light backgrounds, I didn’t want to make my text to long on each page as I thought this may be
too much reading for some children, so I added a text box at the bottom of the screen, this helped break up
the sentences and helped relay the story onto the next page, I used the font chalkduster as it is easy to read
and looks more fun and therefore I thought it would appeal more to a child more than a normal font such as
Arial, its also effective as it appears hand written and looks slightly cartoony which keeps within the theme of
the book. I used colours and settings to really elaborate on the details of the characters, for example on
pages four and eleven when the house of the rich businessman is shown I chose gold and a marble effect as
the main colours on this page as I feel that these connote wealth, with the help of the text theses colours
help elaborate the fact that this character is rich which helps to describe the character to the chid viewing
the book. In the background of many of my pages I include green hills as the story is mostly set in the
country as the brothers travel to the city from their farm, in order to make the hills look more realistic I
added slight shading details with darker and lighter shades of green instead of the background being one
solid colour, I felt that this gave the pages more depth and a more professional look.
The tale of two brothers
Chalkduster font

15. Businessman's house
Gold
Marble effect

16. 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.
• The two main characters in my book are the two brothers, as I stated in the first sentence of my book “there once were two
brothers who lived on a farm, one kind and one selfish”, I said this so early in the book as it is imperative to the story and the
meaning of the book, I used the colours of the brothers clothes to make it easier for children to understand which brother Is
selfish and which one is kind along with the help of the text and narrative, for the kind brother I used bright colours like blue,
red and orange, these bright colours help to describe the kind full nature of the character, I used the red to also connote evil as
the kind boy later in the book turns into a thief, with the selfish brother I used dull colours such as grey and black, which
connote dark and emotionless feelings. The main reason of my book is not just to tell a story but to also teach valuable lessons
to the children who read it about right and wrong, I do this by firstly showing both sides of right and wrong through the actions
of the two brothers, for example the kind brother helps the people he comes across whilst on his journey but his brother does
not and further on in the story the kind brother is helped by the people he helped whilst the selfish brother is not as he did not
help them in the first place, this teaches the lesson of how you should be nice to people and people will be nice to you if you
are. The book also teaches the lesson of how stealing is always wrong, as both brothers steal from the businessman and both
learn their lesson as the kind brother is told off by his father and the selfish brother is hit and told off by the businessman.
Selfish brother Kind brother

17. Pages showing the kind boy help the two people that need it
Pages showing the selfish brother not helping the people that need it

18. 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?
• The main characters in my book are the two young brothers. like a lot of young boys in real life, in the book they are
represented as being adventurous and mischievous as they both go on long journeys looking for work and money far from
home and both steal money from the rich businessman, a lot of young boys are represented as mischievous in fairy tales
for example in the story “the boy who cried wolf” the young boy who is the main character lies to the people in the town
about there being a wolf when there isn't a wolf at all and like in my book the boys mischievous behaviour was his
demise. There are two pages in my book that show an old woman who needs help with her chores, she is represented as
being old and frail as she is unable to complete the jobs she needs to do, when creating this character I was not
stereotyping that all old people are frail and weak and incapable of doing everyday chores, I needed to portray a
believable, everyday situation of someone needing help, I chose the narrative of an old person needing help with chores
as it is a very normal situation that some readers will be able to relate to and it also teaches the lesson of respect your
elders as in the book the grandma Is helped by one of the young brothers. I tried to make my grandmother look more
friendly than most of the old woman who are portrayed in other fairy tales, usually because they are a witch, such as in
the fairy tale snow white and the seven dwarfs. My book involves both the rich and the poor, the young boys are shown
to live on a small farm and not have much money and the businessman is shown to live in a very large mansion, the
businessman is represented as being “rich and rude” this is a stereotypical representation of a rich businessman as they
are often known for being stressed due to there stressful jobs which would describe the rudeness of he businessman in
my story. When viewing my book readers may think that I have not included many women for a certain reason and could
view my book as sexist for this reason, but as to why I did not include women in my book is due to me adapting the
narrative and characters of the already existing fairy-tale off which I based my story, a lot of the characters within the
original fairy tale were female so when I wanted to change these characters I made them into male characters in order to
differ my book from the original.

19. 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?
• As I was creating a more modern version of a fairy tale I wanted to give my book a more modern style whilst still incorporating
a lot factors that would be found in a traditional fairy tale in order for it to still be seen as a fairy-tale by the viewer rather than
just a normal story, I achieved this visual style by creating my illustrations on Photoshop, through using techniques like
rotoscoping and shapes I was a able to achieve a more modern cartoon look rather than a hand drawn traditional look.
Through using these techniques I was able to create more simple looking illustrations with small amounts of detail, I used
bright colours and small details of shading to support the computer generated style I was trying to achieve, I feel like this kind
of illustration style would be more popular amongst my target audience of young children aged 3-6 as its simpler and brighter
coloured which relates to this age range more than a hand drawn styled picture would as children of this age range don’t need
a fully detailed and over complicated illustrations so spending a long time making them would be very unnecessary and would
take up valuable time that I need to focus on other sectors on the production of my book, especially as the majority of the
children who read my book would be more used to computer generated illustrations from watch child cartoons on television.
When creating my characters I used stereotypical visual aspects of how people would describe these types of characters in real
life, for example the businessman in my story is wearing a suit and the old grandma is wearing a nighty, these simple
characteristics support the readers ideas that they already had In their head concerning the visual aspects of certain types of
characters. When making the farm boys characters I used the stereotypical traditional farmer look whilst also taking certain
aspects of the characters such as the straw hat from the front cover of the book “farmer boy” by Laura Ingalls Wilder which on
the cover shows a young boy in a straw hat wearing blue trousers with suspenders, I incorporated these factors into my
character of the kind boy who wears a straw hat and blue overalls.
Kind farm boy
from my book
Farmer boy
front cover

20. These images show the
difference between how
cartoons used to look and
how they look now, as you
can see on the left more
dull colours and shades
were used to help give it a
more realistic look, but as
you can see on the right
now days more bright and
simple colours are used on
cartoon television shows
and children's books these
days as they are known to
be more appealing to a
younger audience

21. 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
• I found my planning and pre production work to be very helpful when it came to producing the final product. I found the proposal
helpful as it gave me a set idea of who my audience were which influenced my decision making in terms of illustrations and
especially storyline, as my target audience was 3-6 year olds I had to take extra care of what to include in my story in terms of what
would be suitable for young children and what wouldn't, one slight disadvantage of using my proposal is that it gave me a set
number of pages which I found quite stressful to comply with as I had to cut down or even remove certain parts within my story in
order to fit in with the page allowance, for example in the original story the main characters came across three obstacles of people
they needed to help on their journey so in my planning I came up with the details for these three situations but when it came down
to production I was unable to fit one of the helping situations into my story so I had to cut this part out from my final product. During
my planning process I also created a mind map and a mood board, I found these helpful as they gave me a basic idea of the visual
and ethical aspects of the characters from writing the detailed aspects of what they were going to do within the story and how they
were going to be represented for example I wrote about how one brother would wear bright clothes and will be nice and the other
would wear darker coloured clothes and be selfish, through the details I had gathered from creating my mind map and mood board I
was able to easily imagine and then produce the illustrations of my characters on Photoshop, one disadvantage of my mood board
was that the images I produced myself didn't turn out the way I had hoped when compared to the illustrations I had found from the
internet and put on my mood board, it seemed that my illustrations lacked the detail I saw on the mood board images. The part of
planning I found most helpful was the digital flat plans I created, each showed a basic layout of each page compiled of both
illustrations I had created myself and ones I had downloaded from the internet which was mostly characters from my mood board,
one reason I found this part of the planning helpful was that is sped up the final production process as it gave me a good idea of
exactly how I wanted my setting to look and where I wanted my characters to be amongst the page which meant I wasted no more
time on think about the details and look of my page, also as I created a lot of my own illustrations to use in the flat plan so when it
came to making the final pages I was able to use illustrations I had already previously created such as houses and trees. One
disadvantage to making my flat plan was that it took up a lot of my time due to the fact that I added to much detail to the pages, due
to this I started to fall behind which may have made me rush some pieces of the work but as I got back on track and completed most
of my work I was able to go back and re do certain pieces in order to hopefully achieve a higher.

22. 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 book is set on a farm and is about two children who go on an adventure and come across
something which entices them and becomes a key piece of narrative within the story, this topic
is explored a lot amongst children's books. Although the story is not exactly the same, I think
that my book involves a relatively similar basis to the classic fairy tale of ‘Hansel and Gretel’,
which is a German fairy tale published in 1812 which involves a brother and a sister who
become lost whilst walking in the woods, they then come across a house made of sweets lived
in by a horrible witch who steals them and makes them work in her house as she fattens them
up to eat them, but they escape. The story has since been adapted many times and was even
made into a film in 2015 called hansel and Gretel: witch hunters.
when looking for stories more related to mine I couldn't’t really find any strong examples that
properly fitted with my narrative, I feel that this is due to using the basis of a fairy tale that is
really old and quite unheard of and the way I adapted it I feel is quite original, most of the books
I found relating to farms are not to do with adventure and more to do with staying on the farm
and others are mostly centred around the animals on the farm, which I think is due to animals
being more appealing to small children. The one book I did think compared with my book best is
a book published in 1933 called ’farmer boy’ by Laura Ingalls Wilder, the book is based on the
early life of her husband who used to live and work on a farm and it follows what he had to do
everyday over the period of a year, the reason I have compared this to my book is because I
used the young farm boy for the basis of making my own farm boy for my book as when I saw
the book the character fit most of the description of the idea I already had in my head for
creating the character.

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