This document contains the responses to a graphic narrative evaluation for a children's book project. The responses discuss how the final product reflects the original intentions, how images were constructed, how text was used to anchor images, the suitability for the intended audience, likes and dislikes of techniques and the final product, inclusion of content, styles employed, and strengths and weaknesses of pre-production planning. Cultural and historical context as well as peer feedback are also addressed.

1. Graphic Narrative
Evaluation

2. Does your final product reflect your
original intentions?
I believe my final project reflects my initial ideas, this is because I
used my original mind map to create my flat plans and in turn I
used my flat plans to help me design my final project.
Differences that have happened across the process is firstly I said
in my mind map that I wanted majority of the text to be in
speech bubbles but when I did the flat plans I changed to having
an area below the image for the majority of the writing and only
some speech bubbles,

3. and then when it came to making the final pages I incorporated the
text into the image but not in the form of speech bubbles. Something
else I changed during the process would be the angle of some of the
elements, for instance to the garages, I wanted to be able to see
down the front and side, in the final book I went with just the front
shot.

4. How well have you constructed your
images?
The Construction of my images went very well this is because I
decided to create all the elements for my book before I even
started on the pages, this included, characters, buildings, piles of
straw/sticks, trees, clouds and the sun. this meant when It came
to creating the pages I just had to insert each element needed
for that page. To create an aesthetically pleasing book I decided
to stick to classic colours for certain elements like the trees, the
sun, the sky, and the grass. I didn’t use textures very much apart
from the road on each page has a texture on it.

5. The Sun
Cloud
Tree
Textured road
The Sky
Grass
Elements I used classic colours with:

6. How well have you used text to anchor
your images?
I originally wasn't going to have the text on the image, it was
going to be its own separate element. I was going to do this after
reading the Gruffalo which uses a similar style on some of the
pages. But after I created all my images I discovered it looked
better if I extended the road area to be able to accommodate
the text. By doing this I was able to increase the size of my
images to make them more eye catching and engaging.

8. Is your product suitable for your
audience?
The audience I described in my proposal will still be suitable for
the book I have created. My target audience is still 2-5 year olds,
depending on the child that might go longer or start earlier just
because they could mature at different ages. I believe my book
would appeal to more the male market but when kids are young
there is more of a chance for them to be interested in things that
stereotypically designed for a particular gender. The audience
would predominately be from the UK but if the book did get
released world wide then it would appeal to all people because
cars are very widley know across the world, especially after the
popularity of the Pixar movie Cars it would give my book an
added appeal.

9. What do you like/dislike about the
techniques you have used?
Throughout the production of my book I used a number of
different techniques. The most common technique I used was
the comic book effect, I used this on majority of my elements.
What I like about this technique the most is the ability to make
an image look very unique with a few tools, to make this
technique even better I rotoscoped over the top of the threshold
layer to make it look more like the other layer.
To do the comic book effect you need to start with 2 layers of the
same image, hide the top layer ( ), use the cut-out filter ( )
on the bottom layer and adjust how you desire,

10. then I coloured parts specific colours so that they would all fall under
the same colour with the paint bucket tool ( ), for example the
green car I used 3 shades of green.
Once I created the threshold layer I rotoscoped around certain areas
to give my elements certain definition, this was done by using the
polygonal lasso tool ( ) and then right clicking and going to layer via
copy. Once these were done I coloured all of these a slightly darker
version of the main colour of the element. To make certain parts was
a lot simpler, like the sky, this consisted of creating a rectangle using
the rectangle tool ( ) and using a gradient overlay on it to get that
darker blue to lighter blue look.
Light Green
Dark Green
Medium Green

11. What do you like/dislike about how
your final product looks?
I really like the continuity across the whole project because there
could have been a chance the first page looked very different to
the last.
I also like how I have kept the whole project relatively simple
looking so that it doesn’t get to overwhelming for the audience,
especially the younger audience.
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12. On the other hand I dislike how simple the look of it is, this is
because I wasn't able to put in as much detail as I could of done but
this could of ended up making the project look scruffy. Another
element of the product I like is the colour of the characters, I picked
these colours because the stand out in contrast to the rest of the
scenery.

13. Why did you include the content you
used?
For my project I spent a long time considering certain cars to
ensure I got the correct shape for a little, sweet, harmless car,
that is why I settled on the style of an original smart car. When it
came to colouring the cars I wanted to pick colours that would
stand out against the brown of the road.
For the garages I had to pick a source image that had a large
enough area around the door to be able to add in the detail like
the sticks, straw and bricks.

14. I chose the particular tree I used because it is very similar to a
classic tree look, and wasn't an odd shape which could have
been confusing to the children.
As this product is aimed at very young children I choose the
particular images so they would be easy for a child to recognize
them with what they have been taught a tree or a car should
look like.
Tree from
book
Real
Tree

15. What signs, symbols or codes have
your used in your work?
For my product the colours I decided on don’t have to much
meaning except that the tow truck is red which gives the
impressing of evil, anger, rage, etc.
The colours of the cars were chosen because of there brightness
which can invoke a happy response, the audience will in turn
want to route for the little cars in the story.

16. What representations can be found in
your work?
My work shows two social groups, the little cars that are just
going by the business and then there is the tow truck who just
wants to cause problems. By not having a variation in my cars it
insinuates they are all related like the the three little pigs in the
original story are all brothers.

17. What style have you employed in your
products?
In my product I have used the cartoon effect style on 90% of the
product the remaining 10% of the product was free hand drawn
on Photoshop and given certain effects that enhance there
intended use. Like a gradient overlay on the sky where the
darker part is at the top, like it would be in real life.
There wasn't any main influences, apart from I choose the style
because when learning about Photoshop techniques I really likes
this particular style, I didn't choose it because it was similar to a
book I researched.
The Style of using cars instead of living things like the pigs or a
wolf was taken from the film cars.
• Discuss influences/ existing products
• What visual style does your work have and why did you

18. Cars, Pixar film.
My Project

19. What were the strengths and weaknesses
of the pre-production and planning?
Using the planning booklet was very useful this is because it gave
me a chance to plot out my 2 weeks of production time, because
of this I was able to work ahead of schedule which meant I was
able to make improvements on the finished project.
A weakness with the planning booklet is that having to consider
elements of the project that didn't have any impact into my
actual production of the product such as like cost and quantity.

20. Historical and cultural context
As far as I’m aware there are no past or present books that have
a similar style to what I have created. The only book that comes
close to it is a book about the 3 little pigs, because it’s the same
story. The idea of using vehicles as the characters came from the
Pixar film cars, the popularity with that and that I know my
nephew is obsessed with vehicles made me decide to use them
to put a twist on a classic story.

21. Peer Feedback
Throughout the creation of my book I have turned to my peers
for feedback on characters, elements and the final pages. By
doing this I was able to tweak my project as I go to reflect the
feedback I have been receiving. One of the biggest changes I
made to my work was the changing of the colour of the tow
truck originally it was purple but I changed it to red because this
reflect evil more.