This document contains the responses from Jordan Lee to questions about their graphic narrative project. Jordan indicates that their final product largely reflected their original intentions and planning. They constructed simple but effective images within the time constraints. Text was used well to anchor the images and provide a clear narrative. Jordan feels the project is suitable for its intended 2-5 year old audience. They liked using shape tools but disliked rotoscoping. While characters could have been improved, overall Jordan is pleased with the consistent style and readability of the final product. Signs, symbols and representations were carefully considered to differentiate characters and create meaning.

1. Graphic Narrative
Evaluation
Jordan Lee

2. Does your final product reflect your
original intentions?
• Yes I think it does reflect on my original intentions as I used
almost all my ideas from my Flat plans and storyboards, the
only thing I changed from them was the amount of pages I
was going to use from my flat plans. I then changed the
amount of pages when I came to doing my storyboard this
was to make it easier for me to finish the book in the amount
of time we had and I also think the original amount of pages
were too many for the target audience to go through and
read. The only big change from the layout and graphics was
how I moved the text off most of the pages on to their own
separate pages. This did put the page count up but as that
was just text I think it was ok to do this because it made my
book look more clean and made a easier read for my TA of 2-5
years olds.

3. This shows the similarities between my flat plans, my original ideas and finished product pages.
It clearly shows how much of the flat plan ideas I actually transferred into the main project.

4. How well have you constructed your
images?
• I think my images were constructed well for the style that I was aiming for this was
a very simple and bold eye-catching style instead of a highly detailed image with
lots of texture and shading. My reason for choosing to do these types of images
came down to two things, one being that it’s a kids book and my TA was 2-5 year
olds I didn’t want to make it too complex for them to look at as at this age it is the
images that you concentrate on.
• My second reason for this simple style is that the time scale in which I had to
complete the full 10 pages was very short and I was planning to do a page per day
which would have made it difficult to do highly detailed images as some of my
Photoshop skills are limited to what I can do in a amount of time. I think if I had
twice as much time I might be able to improve certain aspects from my book there
is some pages that I think lacked professional quality that I could have spent more
time on. In my first page I had a nice clean look to it but on to the 3rd page my
quality dropped and I think I could have transferred some of the things I used in
the first page to this page, some of these things might have been by changing the
angle in which we are looking at the family, I feel that in the first page it worked
really well looking at them from the front because it showed off more of the
detailing and shadowing that I implemented.

5. These pages show a big difference in change and I think the image on the left could
be improved significantly to add more detail and shadowing like the first image.

6. How well have you used text to anchor
your images
• I think I used my text really well and it represented
what was happening in the images, If this book was
published it would be set on a double paged spread
with the text on the right then the images on the left
this gives a good flow to read through the text and
then to look at the images to show what my text is
representing. I also tried to link the text pages with the
image pages through colours similar the image in the
example I’ve shown I used snowflakes to link with a
snowy page these were one of my favourite
combinations of pages as they linked well and this
would also make the book easier to understand for
younger children.

7. Example from my book of two of the linking pages from text and image pages.

8. Is your product suitable for your
audience?
• Yes I feel my product is suitable. My reasoning's for this is that through
planning and then making the final product I tried to really focus on
making it simple, the style was very clear and bold for and 2-5 year olds to
follow by the pictures and by the big clear text which is easier to read for
anybody reading the book. I don’t think this book could be for any other
ages as there is a bit too much text for children under 2 and I think it is too
simple for children over 5 as this is the stage when they are starting to
read more than just following the pictures in a book to tell a story. My
book didn’t specifically lean to either genders as I had a equal spread of
genders in the book this was to prevent any claims of prejudice coming
from my people reading my book. I also didn’t make either gender more
heroic as I didn’t want it to be like a stereotypical fairy tale where the male
comes to the rescue, all my characters were a bit wimpy and fled from the
wolf. I also aimed in the proposal to turn this into a book that could be
shown to kids through pre school and nursery and I think I have achieved
that.

9. What do you like/dislike about the
techniques you have used?
• The techniques that I really liked using in this project was the shape
task, I think this worked the best for the style of images that I was
trying to achieve which were simple and bold images. I used the
shape task for the majority of all the images through out my book I
think this made it easier and quicker for if I wanted to change the
way something was positioned as I had lots of layers that I could
select and change this gave me more freedom and originality
compared to using something like rotoscoping.
• I disliked using the rotoscoping for this reason being that it wasn’t
original and didn’t give me the freedom to have everything just how
I wanted. Even though I disliked it I still used it in my book it was
useful for more detailed items like pieces of clothing or props in the
book this also showed some variety of other tools I can use.

10. Two examples of the tools and methods I used. On the first image I used only the shape
task method to create the pig but for the tree to get the branches realistic I rotocoped the
stalk and branches then used shape tools to do the leaves.

11. What do you like/dislike about how
your final product looks?
• The things I really liked within my project was the way I used a
limited and well matched colour palette to keep all the images
consistent throughout the book, this just gave it a bit more of a
professional look compared to if I just randomly used a range of
shades throughout the book.
• I also liked the change I made from my planning and flat plans
which was removing the text from the actual image pages and
putting it onto a separate page that linked up with the image pages
I think this gave a nice flow to the book and didn’t make it look so
crammed on one page.
• Things I disliked in my book was the characters, I don’t think that
these were the best pieces of work that I could have made as they
didn’t have a lot of detail and I could have tried them acting out
other movements to add some more variety but in the time I had I
think these were sufficient enough to make the book work well.

12. These are the changes I made to the pages by removing the text, I think this was the most
positive change as it added more to the book and also anchored the text to the book a lot
nicer than the first time I tried it on the page.

13. Why did you include the content you
used?
• The images I used I picked because my book was based on were
going on a bear hunt and I tried to keep the scenarios similar to the
ones in the book just with my own touch to them as these were
suitable for a kids book but I think the original were going on a bear
hunt would have been aimed at a higher audience as their images
were more complex. The font I picked was ‘Point free’ I used this
because is had a nice flow between letters and was bold which was
a good combination in a font for a children's book and it had flicks
of some letters which makes it easy for younger children to read.
The colours used in my book were all picked to be pleasing to look
at I tried to pick pastel colours and realistic shades to give it some
realism even though I was trying to making it very simple. I think
this worked and I really liked how most of the pages came out
because I tried to give them a touch of realism.

14. A example of ‘Point free’ the text I used throughout my book for a easy read for children.

15. What signs, symbols or codes have
your used in your work?
• Some signs that have been used in my work is in page 12 when the family enter the cave I
have used dark colours to represent the cave but also to create a dark scary space that is
intimidating to the pigs and adds a sense of mystery and suspense into my story. In page 16 in
my pigs house I used nice bright colours that felt warm and homely to show I sign in my work
that this is a place of safety and a secure place where these pigs live.
• In my character designs you can see clear signs of their ages and who they are to the family
of pigs without me even mentioning who they are in the book. My dad pig was the clearest
representation as he wore some old fashioned clothes and had a beard, this shows that he is
one of the older ones in the family he was also leading the family a lot of the way through
the obstacles to also show his maturity of testing things first to make sure they were safe.
The son in the book just wears a basic shirt and that’s it, I think this shows a clear difference
between the ages.
• I also showed a clear difference between the ages of the female characters in my story and
also the gender difference between the male characters I gave the girls longer her which you
would stereotypically link with females so even from the shots where you don’t see their face
you naturally see the difference between the genders. I dressed them in dresses and
stereotypically feminine colours to also highlight the difference between the characters as
the male characters were put in masculine colours that were quite plain and drab.

16. This shows the signs and symbols discussed in the last page. The clear differences and
Stereotypically used colours and character representations.

17. What representations can be found in
your work?
• Although in my book it doesn’t feature any humans the
family of pigs resemble a very stereotypical human
family with a dad, mum, daughter and son with a clear
difference between the genders and ages for each
character as I would dress the mum and dad different
to the children and they would have certain different
features and also the size difference between the pigs.
• As for religion I didn’t include any because I didn’t want
to seem bias to any other religions if I just picked one
and also I would find it difficult to write a religion into
my book as I just followed the same original story
which didn’t have much of a personal following of the
family it just followed their adventure on a wolf hunt.

18. What style have you employed in your
products?
• A big influence to my style that I used for this was Peppa Pig
as this show used a very simplistic and bold type of graphics
this show is highly popular to children that are in my target
audience so this style was nice to base my graphics on. In the
programme they made the family of pigs similar to a very
stereotypical human family. This included a mum, dad, son
and daughter, I really liked this idea because it gives more
variety to gender and ages into my story so that I wont seem
bias to a certain gender or age. I also chose this style because
I liked it personally over a more detailed style of graphics, I
think the bold bright colours and smooth clean images made
the book pleasing to look at and in some ways looked more
professional than a hand drawn version of the book.

19. These Images show the similarities
in the families and how I tried to use
a style similar.

20. What were the strengths and weaknesses
of the pre-production and planning
• I think a lot of the planning we did were strengths rather than
weaknesses. The schedule really helped me to get a idea of how to
map out my time and how to use my time effectively throughout
the project, I think I have succeeded this project on time due to the
schedule.
• One of the main weaknesses in my planning I think was my
proposal I feel like it could have been more detailed and that I could
have built up on the audience that I was making my book for as it
was a limited description into who they were.
• I didn’t really ever refer back to my mood boards and mind maps
this may have been because they weren't very detailed and didn’t
show a he range of ideas but It could have been because I always
had a idea of what I was wanting to recreate and how I was going to
go about doing it.

21. These are come of the pieces that I feel I could have improved on to help my ideas
throughout production with the key one being the audience profile needing to be
improved due to the low detail.

22. Historical and cultural context
• Other products similar to this is ‘We’re Going On A Bear Hunt’.
As this was a fairly recent book compared to some other more
traditional books there hasn’t been any remakes that I have
found yet on the internet. I think it was a good book to base
my book off as I had the freedom to be totally original with it
as there isn't any other remakes out there. I think the way I
remade the book was a nice change as I completely changed
the style of illustrations compared to the original hand drawn
and oil painted images. I changed the characters in my book
to pigs and a wolf this gave my book more of a traditional feel
to it as pigs and wolfs are widely recognised as fairy tale
characters and have a sort of rivalry in other children books,
this made it a good and understandable change to the book.

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