Assignment Seven - 03

Design a Children Storybook - The Book

Reflections
Initially when we heard from Mr Julian that he intended to replace the last storybook assignment with a web design assignment this year, we very much prefer the latter since both my groupmate and I have some experience in it from our Polytechnic courses. However, I'm glad he didn't as I felt the experience of creating a storybook, especially one for kids, was extremely fulfilling! Perhaps because I once aspire to be a children books' illustrator and I love drawing, this assignment gave me the chance and pleasure to do both professionally.

As this was a major project, communication between members was vital to work efficiently and pleasantly. We met face to face on big discussions such as plot brainstorming and constantly talk on MSN while we work individually to work out problems etc. Any decisions were communicated and agreed together which can be quite a task as well when both of us have our own point of view. It is interesting for me to hear new ideas and receive constructive feedback on mine. I've also learnt a useful Illustrator trick or two from Shu Hui!

I felt the biggest concern about the project is the time limit. With an assignment 6B this semester, that leaves us with approximately 3 weeks to finish, including printing of the storybook. Moreover, it spans over the last few weeks of the semester which means it'll collide with other modules' final papers and projects. I guess time management was important as usual and I'm glad we managed to scrap off completing everything one day prior to the deadline. Although being a team of two means more work to be distributed between us (as compared to groups with three and four), we felt that it was easier to communicate and compromise, especially on times for meeting.

Seeing others' works during tutorial and final presentation, the one thing I felt our storybook lacks is a truly captivating story. I like the plots some groups came up with, that were funny which I believe are stories that kids will remember and go around telling their friends. To me, that's how a successful storybook should be like, one that's remembered! Nevertheless, I'm very proud of our storybook and enjoyed cooperating with Shu Hui.

Here's our completed storybook, resized for web viewing.

The Book

(left to right, top to bottom)
Images are resized 40% original size, so slight distortion may occur

Conclusion

Overall Thoughts

Module Review
It was definitely a refreshing break from the numerous academic papers we have to write in University. In fact, I very much prefer doing such projects than writing so I've enjoyed the module a lot! The module is extremely time-consuming with a new project each week. I actually have only 3 days for each new project since I took up the early week's tutorial! ..which is hardly enough to thoroughly explore the assignments. Honestly, I did the most research and brainstorming for the first assignment which spans 3 weeks (which was rather long but I guess it was to get us familiarized with the tools involved). For the rest, I had a day to brainstorm and doodle sketchy drafts on rough papers to get started on the prototypes; and only transferred my sketches much later.

One needs both creativity and skills for this module.. which I guess it can be rather unfair to students who are new to graphical tools. It can frustrating when you have good ideas but cannot express them due to lack of skills. I use mainly Adobe Illustrator for all of my assignments which is surprising because the tool was my nemesis during Polytechnic studies. However, I picked it because all the assignments are on prints and vector graphics will be the best to work with (e.g. scaling without distortion). It was delightful to be given a purpose and the opportunity to practice and improve my skills.

Additionally, I enjoyed the type of assignments presented to us as it covers a wide range including photography, posters etc. The portfolio required at the end will serve as a good resume as well, should I pursue design-related jobs after graduation.

Tutorial Review
On my own, I always put up my works on forums/groups for fellow peers to review them as their criticisms and suggestions are the only way I can improve. So I value the form of presenting your work and receiving feedback about it during tutorial. I believe one usually has limited perspectives especially on your own work when you become impressed with a certain concept and stick to it, failing to see deeper and explore out of your boundaries. The tutors and peers definitely played a part in helping me improved. My brother, particularly has helped me A LOT with his criticisms since he is unafraid to tell me if what he dislike about my works and he's more readily available than my peers.

A suggestion for tutorial though is the form of presenting. Before class, I thought we will be using the overhead projector to project our sketchbook on the white screen because the original size of our sketches and prints are way to small for the entire class to see. I think being able to see our works in details will encourage appropriate and more comments from the class. This can be applied to the final presentation in the lecture as well. It is near impossible for the whole class to see the storybooks and personally I felt that most of us, especially at the back, were getting restless and hardly paying attention eventually.

Assignment Seven - 02

Design a Children Storybook - Phase Two (Final)

Styles and Layouts
Body text: Initially we wanted a more kids-like or fanciful font, such as "Comic Sans" as it'll suit our theme. However, our research shows children storybooks using neat and professional font because it is easier for children to read since they are still trying to grasp and learn the words. After trying out various font choices, we decided upon "Verdana" for the above reasons.

Cover text: We used "", a font with edgy corners which is consistent with the design of the illustrations' backgrounds. It is a fun font yet not too fanciful so the words are still distinguishable for kids.

Colors style: We used soft pastel coloring with no shadings so the outlook is clean and clear. Our palette colors are bright pastel colors so the images look lively and appeals to children.

Layout: Illustrations are consistently on the top (2/3 of page) while the story text resides at the bottom (1/3 of page), left aligned. The illustrations have angular backgrounds which are consistent with the shapes of dialogs in the drawings. The borders will contain the illustrations so they are separated from the text and add interest to the design.

Binding: We chose soft cover perfect binding which takes only a day, allowing more buffer time for us to evaluate and edit our storybook. It also costs significantly lesser than hard cover.

Illustrations Edits
Tools: Sketchbook, Scanner, Adobe Illustrator

After planning the scenes, I sketched them proportionally on paper and scanned into the computer. Initially, we wanted to use the original linearts and only fill in the colors in Adobe Photoshop. But after several attempts, we decide against it as my groupmate is more familiar with the Adobe Illustrator tool. Hence, we switched to it so both of us can work efficiently.

The switch means we will be using vector illustrations as well which was more work than we planned. To compress the work into our limited time frame, my partner will trace and create the vector drawings as I sketched the next scenes on paper. Thus, we were working concurrently.

1. Sketch (scan) / 2. Draft (50% of original size)

3. Final (50% of original size)

As soon as I'm done with the sketches, I started edited the drafts while my groupmate continued with rest of the sketches. I changed the colors to a softer shade as we initially discussed. The outlines are also soften by replacing black with their darker respective colors. I did some tweaking of the vector lines and added the background as well.

With the illustrations finalized, we added text and page no to them and saved them as PDF for printing. Oddly, the colors in the saved PDF appears to have been white-washed and when we tried alternate formats such as PNG and JPG, the vectors lose its sharpness and the edges look rather pixelated. It was an unexpected problem as we thought using CMYK pantone colors will fix such issues. It was after much googling and trial and errors that we found assigning color profiles that looks most like the colors we've used and embedding the ICC profiles while saving the PDF minimizes the color loss.

Sample of Page (50% of original size)

Our final storybook consists of 18 pages, including a cover page, title page, the story and a back cover.

Assignment Seven - 01

Design a Children Storybook - Phase One
What? Design a storybook for children age 6-9.
Partner: Shu Hui

Research/Brainstorm
We start off by researching existing children storybooks to know what is expected of us. We realised that most of the books:
- uses animal characters
- have a morale behind the story
- have a happy ending of rewarding the good and punishing the bad
- have fairly large colored illustrations

With these aims in mind, we brainstormed several simple stories revolving around a day with Bear (our main character) and his friends.

Drafts of Characters

Different Versions of Bear

We experiment with different looks for Bear. The looks of the other characters will be based on the structure of Bear. Eventually, we chose the round plush look (right) as we think it'll appeal to children the most.

Story
During tutorial, the story we presented was as follows:
"Bear goes on a walk and meet three of his friends, Bunny, Bee and Owl. He asks them to play with him respectively but is rejected with excuses such as being too busy. Dejected, he sits by the lake till evening. When he heads home, he sees his friends outside his house with surprise party - it's Bear's birthday! Thus, his friends actually were too busy preparing for the event to play with Bear."
Critique: The previous events (getting rejected) does not really tie with the surprise party.

While refining our story, we also tried to include a morale this time and came up with:
"Bear goes on a walk and meet three of his friends, Bunny, Bee and Mother Hen. Bunny is working in his carrot field, Bee is stuck in a spider web and Mother Hen has lost her chick. Bear offers to help them and in return he was rewarded with a carrot, pot of honey and pair of eggs. On his way home, he decides to use his gifts to create a delicious cake. He invites his friends over and they share the cake happily."

Here, it reflects the friendship among Bear and his friends more. It shows working together makes things easier and that good turns are rewarded. The events are better linked as well. We've also named the characters so the children can better identify with them.

With the story finalized, we began planning and sketching the illustrations. The skeleton of our story will be 14 pages as follows:
1) Bobby Bear goes on a walk
2) Bobby Bear meets Hoppy Bunny
3) Bobby Bear helps Hoppy Bunny (work in carrot field)
4) Bobby Bear receives reward (carrot) and bids goodbye
5) Bobby Bear meets Bizzy Bee (trapped in spider web)
6) Bobby Bear helps Bizzy Bee (use stick to untangle)
7) Bobby Bear receives reward (honey pot) and bids goodbye
8) Bobby Bear meets Mother Hen
9) Bobby Bear helps Mother Hen (find Little Chick)
10) Bobby Bear receives reward (eggs) and bids goodbye
11) Bobby Bear walks home (has an idea)
12) Bobby Bear in kitchen, baking
13) Bobby Bear looks at cake and thinks of his friends
14) Bobby Bear eats the cake happily with his friends

Gestalt Principles

Lecture Exercise
What? Use 3 simple shapes to demonstrate any 3 gestalt principals.

Closure / Proximity / Continuity

Assignment Five - 03

Personalize your Notebook - Phase Three (Final)

Exterior/Interior (laptop colors)

Final
After much brainstorming, I added white swirls resembling tree bark to blend the trees together. Now the mirrored trees look as if they're connected and definitely is an improvement. I've also edited the water ripple, using photographs as references so it looks more accurate.

The designs are submitted to the MTV-tama contest: see my entry here. I've chosen black for the screen borders, white keypads and yellow/golden mousepad. The colors also reflect my theme (from black - neutral/white - color/yellow).

Assignment Five - 02

Personalize your Notebook - Phase Two

Prototype - Exterior
Draft #4 is further developed and worked on Illustrator. Reality and fantasy are mainly brought out through the contrasting color schemes. To emphasized on the "fine line" between the two of them, I divided the design symmetrically and have the child standing on the line. The sketchy background was a new attempt, adding/tweaking the scribble options for the fill color of the path. As the scribbles only comes in one direction, I overlaid two backgrounds to achieve the cross-section effect.

Prototype - Interior
The interior design reuses illustrations from the exterior design. The world is however divided horizontally and the rainbow is used as a transition from the reality to the dream. The colors are also inverted (e.g. black trees on white background and colored trees on black background) to show that the two realms are interrelated.

Critique:
The tutor commented my message I wish to convey is clear so it's a big relief. However, he suggested that the impact of mixing reality and dreams will be better if the transition of the trees from reality to dreams blends together (instead of a clear line).

I agreed with the suggestion and took up the challenge. I thought of applying a gradient (i.e. from white trees to brown) but the effect does not appear well with the rest of my illustrations which uses hard solid colors. I also thought of doing a cross-section sketch effect where the trees' colors collide but it clashes with the background effect.