The document provides feedback on a graphic narrative project. It summarizes the key points made in each response section, evaluating how well the final product reflects the original intentions, how the images were constructed, how text was used to anchor images, the suitability for the target audience, techniques used, and representations in the work. Overall it reflects on the strengths and weaknesses of the pre-production planning.

1. Graphic Narrative
Evaluation

2. Does your final product reflect your
original intentions?
Digital flat plan 1
Digital flat plan 2
Final Book
I believe that my final product does reflect on my digital flat plans. There has
been lots of change made through out the process but by looking between each
stage you can see what was planned and that I mostly got everything I was
planning done. Overall I believe my final product is good but with some of the
detail on the pages was not as high as the final came out as. This can been seen
within the first flat plan where the view point is far away (view from outside of
house). The amount filling the page was much more than the final making it look
not as noisy and active as the original flat plan. This is because I drew the first flat
plan by hand and the page sizes on a smaller scale to the final which made it
much quicker to get the little detail done. My second flat plan did not have as
much time put into this as after my first flat plan I had what I wanted planned so I
left this simple with no detail. I personally think that my final product is the best
out of the 3 though as it is all original with only some rotoscoping unlike the
second flat plan where none of it was my own work but taken of the internet so
by creating the final product allowed me to take my own style as I was
unsuccessful to show how I was wanting it does in the second flat plan.

3. How well have you constructed your
images?
I personally think that my images have been constructed well as all the pages were made by using
adobe software photoshop. Within photoshop I used mostly the shape tool. I started by creating the
characters on a blank background and saved as a photoshop file and a png so I can edit characters for
different pages and also used png so the characters had no background and could be dropped into
backgrounds and resized easily. I created the characters by imagination as I did not want to copy
anyone else's characters as it needed to unique. I chose to spend longer on the single horizontal page
as it was showing inside the spaceship and I thought for my audience that page would take most
interest to them. I also added extra characters then I thought I was going to have.
I also used the rotoscope tool within photoshop so I could go round the fruits on the market as I was struggling to make
them look good by using just the shape tool. Within layers needing shading or extra texture and detail I used the layer
style by double clicking on the layer to bring up I then used the appropriate styles it offered for
whatever I was making which could’ve been the kitchen and its shadows or anything. I wanted
to make my book look slightly comic themed so that’s why I chose to
use carton six as it looks bold and clear with a cartoon feel making it
suitable. I also chose to put a round rectangle behind all of the text as the font is
set in caps I thought it would be more clear to see with a strong simple background. I may have used some of the same
page layouts but I still changed the things within the background to make an effect of time passing.

4. All of the above are zoomed screenshots of slight texture which is more clear on the actual saved
pages. I used texture on the ground as normally the ground is quite a large area and when there is just
colour with nothing else it looks still and boring so by adding slight texture or more layers to build up it
creates a less empty look and makes the page look more filled. To create the grass texture I got a
cartoon grass sample from google and put it into photoshop, I then went to filter I then used a filter to
tweak the look of the grass and then added a new layer of a green I wanted and put the grass layer
overlay above but with a low opacity blending the colours and giving a slight texture. I added texture
to the planet by giving it craters to give it a slight 3D look and then selected the purple I used for the
base and made it slightly darker and then used the pen tool with fine small tip to give some extra
detail. To create the grass detail and the path detail of the view of jacks house I used the layer styles
and used the texture with a low opacity to try give small detail for it being so zoomed out.

5. How well have you used text to anchor
your images
I think that I have managed to overall use text to anchor my images well apart from on my third page with
the sunset background. This is because on this page jacks mum is meant to go back inside and jack is planting
the seeds in the garden and even though he is stood outside his house I think it improve I would change this
page to a point of view being a close up of him with the seeds planted in his garden making it clear it has
been done. Aside from my third page I find that the rest of my pages are anchored well to the text and it is
clear to read the story and look at the pictures to compare. I have also used speech in some of the pages. I
used speech bubbles when the characters had little speech said but on the pages where more was spoken I
used a second rounded rectangle and indicated who was speaking with there name before the speech this
was because I did not want to fill the page with massive speech bubbles and it took less space sometimes
using just a rectangle. I rewrote the story and my version short but sweet unlike the original which was very
long as shown in my ‘Development Pro Forma’. This made the book a lot more suitable for the age group I
have chosen (age 3-6). This also allowed me to illustrate my images better as it gave me more room. It was
also useful to be able to have larger text as having lots of text and keeping space would’ve meant smaller text
making it more difficult to read.

6. Is your product suitable for your
audience?
My target audience is aged 3-6 and as I said in my development pro forma
my book is not aimed at a specific gender as it covers things I would find
female and male to enjoy. This is because my book has no action making it
less scary but does still involve an alien cyclops but also and alien princess
and I find by making the princess be in the story pulls a female audience but
also pulling the male for it being in space and the princess being an alien.
My book was written in English making it suitable for countries who use the
English language such as the list on the right, other countries may have
some English in certain places but the list is of countries with a majority
speaking English. If my book was to be sold in store I would keep it within
the UK to see how it goes and if it was enjoyed and have a certain amount
made making the first batch sold a first and addition out of 10,000 prints. I
also think that the products look suits either gender as the colours were not
chosen upon suiting a certain gender neither was the style. I find that this
book suits the modern age younger audience best now as girls are now
more into things they wouldn’t have been before.

7. What do you like/dislike about the techniques
you have used?
I like the simplicity of my overall book but as I mostly used
the shape tool on the side bar to get the overall structure
making the images have simple base colours but which
can be further edited further after within things such as
layer styles and adding shadows and textures in some
cases. To give the shapes characters bodies more naturally
shaped I used the transform function and within there I
used warp so that I could slightly adjust the curve sides
the have more curve and give things perfectly straight a
more imperfect line so it doesn’t look to perfect. I also
used the filter gallery to give things more of a cartoon
look by removing or adding more detail but keeping the
base shape and colour feature. I also chose to use
rotoscoping which is a tool which allows you to go round
an area and select it and then fill it and make it your own
which works well for my theme of getting real images
from online and going round them to make my own
cartoon version. For the majority I left everything
untextured apart from some terrain and in the indoor
pages but the rest I left as I thought too much would’ve
taken away the simplicity I wanted.

8. What do you like/dislike about how
your final product looks?
I liked my 2 pages which were indoors the most. The first page which was inside was the first
page of the book and was inside the kitchen with Jack the main character his mum and his pet
goat. I liked this page as it was easier to add the detail and fill the page. For instance I added in a
personal feature of a photo frame to make it seem like an actual home. I also like my
7th page as it is again filled with stuff going on
making it a very fun page for a kid to look at as
it can be explored. I also liked this pa ge for its 3D
look on a room. This was done by making the walls, roof and
floor co nnect giving it a depth of filed. I did not like the use
one of my pages 4 times but I did change the backgrounds by
making the time change as the story goes on to give it a sense
of time. I also did not like that I did not have the time to make
a front cover for my book as it would of make it look more professional. I liked that I put the
simple science behind the time by moving the planets in the sky in the space pages and moving
the moon and sun.

9. Why did you include the content you
used?
The font I used for my whole book was CARTON SIX I chose this font for its cartoon look and
its constant cap theme as there is not lower case included with it. I chose the font from
www.Dafont.com I did not mind that the font had to be capital letters with this font as it makes it
really clear and distinct what the letters are making the font suitable for a younger audience
which my book is aimed at.
The colours used within the pages which were in day time so needed to be bright were vibrant
strong colours which are clear and distinctive. For the pages in space and at night I made it much
darker by adding a black layer with a low opacity over all the image to create a dimmed shadow
look like it is nice so the colours are slightly darkened on the buildings unlike in previous pages
where the buildings colours are a much brighter look. Throughout the book I used shadows to
create depth and to show angles on light direction of where the sun is sat on the page. I also used
some gradient effect on the ground as the ground is quite a large empty so by adding something
to the solid colour makes the page look less empty. I also used the gradient overlay tool to create
the change in colour for to show a sunset and to give the sky not a solid colour and some more
detail. The stroke was used on the majority of things in my images such as characters, buildings
terrain, items. I did this to make sure the colours behind and around those things were distinct
the different between the 2 things which also gives a more cartoon look

10. What signs, symbols or codes have
your used in your work?
I chose to make the opening of jacks kitchen nothing to special and fancy as I wanted to show that Jack
was not very rich and wasn’t struggling where it wasn’t capable but want better. I also showed jacks
house next to another house which has more stories and looks nicer with not slanted windows and a
bad roof. I also chose bright vibrant colours to work with throughout my book as I wanted it to look nice
for the younger audience and not be a sad but enjoyable view when reading it. I chose to have a mix
group of characters and different raced characters from white and black characters to show different
culture as it is set in the modern day and this should not make a difference. I also chose to use aliens as
it is something quite modern and is a good attraction to the younger audience and I did not want the
book to be seriously taken as it is only a children’s book. I kept each character to have the same clothing
between pages but different positioning as I wanted them to be varied but wanted the colour to help
the children once they knew who is and what colour it will help them understand and follow the story
easier. (Jack always in blue top).

11. What representations can be found in
your work?
I have shown the child in the book ‘Jack’ being very similar looking to his mum but smaller and
obviously a boy. I made his mum taller to show the age difference. I also included a police officer
who is a man and is smaller than jacks mum. I also added a random character put into make it
look realistic. You do not find out his name in the book but he is Jacks next door neighbour and is
a black man. Jack and his mum are white and the book theme was based on England so adding
different race is normal as in England it is normal to have mix community. My book does not
include any religion. The only thing I added which had pattern and was meant to show an Alien
language was the strange print on the body of the princess and the cyclops. This was to give the
Alien feel as the patterns could look like anything you'd imagine as they aren’t important but
when making them I was thinking alien language. I went for a typical green for the princess and
an orange for the cyclops and chose bright vibrant colours to try create a less scary look as there
is no valance shown in this version of the book. I made the page showing the interior of the
spaceship more detailed and 3D to show the size to show that the cyclops is large. On my last
page of the book I chose to use yellow as the barricade that the police put up as it links to yellow
tape police use for crime scenes and investigations in real life. I also chose to put a blue and red
colour fade over the characters and in the sky for that area to try represent police are there and a
police car could be making the sky glow that colour in that area.

12. Through out the story I have shown how Jack does not give up even when people do not have
faith in him. At the beginning of the book Jack and his mum are both happy as Jack tells him mum
he is going to help their problems. After jack comes back from saying he will solve their issues, he
comes home with only some beans and his mum does not believe they are magic and have as
much trust as Jack does. His mum walks away sad in this scene which shows that Jacks mum is no
longer happy but even so Jack does not give up. Jack then goes on his adventure up the bean
stalk on his own and saves the princess and gets lots of treasure. Once he is back from this his
mum is happy which is right until the end of the story. This shows that over the book Jacks mum
has gone from being good to bad to good again whilst Jack has kept his happiness throughout all
of it. And this shows that sometimes adults may look down upon kids and think they are
uncappable but if you stick at it you can do great things.

13. What style have you employed in your
products?
Before making my own version of the story I looked into other modern takes of the story on
amazon where I went on their book section and looked at Jack & The Beanstalk, where I then saw
how they made there pages look and how they made the story go. I decided because none of the
books had massive changes from the original and kept it similar to the original, I would make
mine very different by changing the story from being set in the olden days to the present day and
with aliens in space with portals. This made it quite a different take on the story but I felt
appropriate for the people of our era adding space and not the usual giant but with an added
alien cyclops and alien princess would make it more interesting. I decided to make my theme
cartoon by using a cartoon font and making my characters and backgrounds cartoon. I chose
cartoon as I found that a lot of the other takes of the book were either drawn then scanned on or
made digitally but not very cartoon. I also thought by going for a simplistic look like the original
but cartoon would allow me to make the book within the time we had. I created my simple
cartoon look by sticking to bright bold colours and not creating too much detail as it can take
cartoon look away and start to become more realism.

14. What were the strengths and weaknesses
of the pre-production and planning
My research helped as I could see what the originals looked like and how they made the story go
and how I could change it to fit a more modern theme. By using
http://www.worldoftales.com/fairy_tales.html I was able to read a very old version of Jack and
the beanstalk. I then looked up on google images jack and the beanstalk book so that I could look
at how designs have gone for other books and what they made happen within the pages etc. I
then thought about how I could make this different to previous and that’s why I chose a simple
cartoon look as I did not see anything too similar to the style when I looked online. By drawing
out quickly my initial idea as a flat plan and then making a quick photoshop flat plan using images
similar to my idea from online, allowed me to figure out how I will lay out my pages (where I will
put the text in the page along side the images. This made it much quicker to get into making the
book as our time started as I knew straight away what I was making and how it is going to go. The
thing I did not plan well and could have planned better is my time as it was not managed as good
as I wanted but I still managed to finish before the time ran out giving me some time to improve
on some of my pages where needed. I also did not follow my planning exactly for timing as I
sometimes managed to complete a page much quicker then overs so overall some pages were
quick and some took much longer such as my second last page and my first page as they were
both interior and found it much harder to fill the page. i also ended up using PNG files as well as
JPED and PDF. This was because I also wanted to save my characters separately as both PDF to be
later edited and also PNG so that I could remove the background before saving as PNG so when I
later post a character into a page they can be easily put in without any worry of having a
background which a JPEG gives when saved.

17. I also found it useful in my planning to create a story breakdown as it allowed me to see how
many pages I was going to be making before so I could work out what I would put on each page
so that I could cover enough in each page without needing anymore pages then 8. I also found it
very useful to have wrote the story before starting the imagery as I could work out how much
text would go on each page and how much of the page it would take up so that I did not later put
the text on the page and it ruined the imagery. (worked my way around the text then working my
away the image).

18. Historical and cultural context
Overall my story has kept to the typical basis of what happens in the story of Jack & The
Beanstalk which is starts introducing Jack, Jack goes and gets the beans, They grow massive and
Jack climbs the beanstalk to a magical place and he is rewarded there in someway and lives
happily ever after. Mine follows that same path but with added and slightly tweaked things such
as he climbs up a giant beanstalk to then go through a portal which takes him to a new planet.
This makes mines much more unique to the copies of the story before as I have taken a classic
and added a modern twist which the kids would enjoy in our present day. I have found that older
versions of the book have not made there pages as entertaining as mine with the amount
happening in the page and strong vibrant colours being used make mine look more like children’s
book compared the dull colours being used on the older versions.

19. Feedback 1
• What do you like about the graphics?
• Backgrounds very detailed and high quality, love the inside of the space
ship.
• The characters are high quality and consistent throughout.
• What would you do to develop the graphics?
• Could show some more detail of jack climbing the beanstalk/the top of the
beanstalk as they’re very good but cant be seen very clearly eg. Add some
close ups of jack climbing the beanstalk and reaching the top.
• Condensing the amount of text on each page may fit better with the target
audience.

20. Feedback 2
• What do you like about the graphics?
• I like how detailed the background and characters are.
• I like how you have made the text easily identifiable by
putting a box around it so it can be clearly read
• What would you do to develop the graphics?
• To improve you could possibly condense some of the text
so that it isn’t as long, meaning children won’t find it as
difficult to read.
• You could change the last page to be in portrait instead of
landscape to fit with the other pages.

21. Feedback 3
• What do you like about the graphics?
– The background is very detailed. The characters
are simple but good. I feel like the font is a good
choice for a children's book.
• What would you do to develop the graphics?
– I think the thought bubble needs to change
speech bubbles

22. Peer Feedback
• Summarise peer feedback and discuss
It was clear that everyone found a problem with so much text being implemented in a book for
an audience of 3-6. I agree with this as looking at other peoples work everyone had it short and
snappy making it simple to understand what was going on in a few sentences. I also agree with
that I could have made the page with the beanstalk and jack climbing it more focused on that and
a close up of jack climbing instead of the zoomed out view of the scene. I would change that as
the books named it Jack and the ‘Beanstalk’ so having a focused page on just the beanstalk would
have made sense. I agree with my backgrounds being detailed as I focused them as priority first
making sure they were right before moving on. I also agree with my characters being simple but a
good choice for a children’s book and that is because by having some facial expressions helps the
younger children reading what those characters are feeling and too much detail in characters
could be confusing. I disagree with my bubbles I designed looking like thought bubbles and not
speech as it will not effect a child who will understand that it is a thought bubble as there is text
inside of it. I also disagree with my horizontal page should be vertical like the rest. I designed it so
the as you go through the book once you get to that page all you have to do is turn the book and
I found landscape was better for an interior spaceship image.