Final Evaluation of children's Book

Firstly I chose to have my book printed in a normal paperback style because on my proposal there are two graph which display information that states that parents prefer normal books to animation, Ebooks and Audio Books. Here is one of the graphs.

I tried to combine many elements from other children’s books, for example this “Blue’s Clue’s” book has a cutout and drawn style that I tried to emulate. As you can see bothe the Blue’s Clue’s book and my page looks roughly drawn with some crude edges. But the Blue’s Clue’s book has more refined edges and looks smoother whilst my page looks roughly drawn and is less refined.

Also in my proposal I said I may incorporate real material for the readers to feel, for example this book had a theme like this:

I could not incorporate this aspect of the book due to not having enough time(due to actually designing and making the pages) and it being rather impractical when I was mainly using paper for the book material and not cardboard. My proposal went to plan when it came to using a cut out style for the whole book, as you can see from the image above I made Scampy look bolder and more defined whilst the background is undefined. This helps Scampy stand out more.

In my proposal I said that I would aim my book at children aged between 2-4; because of this I choose cut out as my art style as a rough background and a bold and defined character would keep the child of that age's attention on the character and in turn it would make the child attached to the character. As stated before the majority of the survey answers prefered traditional books to newer formats such as Ebooks and audiobooks; because of this I chose to use paper as my format to appease my target audience.

At first I found drawing a head with many expressions easier than drawing a proper full body. This was due to the fact that I used tracing paper to copy the head itself so I could focus on the facial expressions themselves. Drawing a body that stays in proportion to the head was difficult but I did manage to settle on a design. I also tried drawing the body in many cat like positions I found on Google Images. Here is the resulting concept art:

As you can see there are many unfinished drawings such as the unfinished body and tail on the right. You can also see many attempts at drawing a cat sitting down.

Next I attempted to draw two settings for the book; one being the sitting room and the other being a bedroom. Pictured here:

The first picture(the bedroom) is one I had the most trouble with due to the proportions of the floor lines and the wall lines. The drawer in the first picture is also a bit off due to it’s positioning on the actual line that separates the wall and the floor; also the bed is slanted and off. I am more happy with the second living room picture due to it capturing the 2d style I wanted at the beginning of the conception. Overall I feel like I'm pleased with most of the conceptual a rework I had worked on but I feel I should have put a little more artistic effort into the first picture of the bedroom.

Software wise I feel I've made a lot of progress on Photoshop as I now know how to make the lines on my drawings more defined and I know how to make a colour layer.I've learnt about the RGB and CMYK colour settings which have helped with the colour on my book. In Design was a new experience but I feel I've made a lot of progress on it as I know now how to create a story book layout with a front, back and spread page. I've also learnt about the new 'bleed' settings when printing the book; this gave me trouble at first but I soon learnt about it and fixed the print settings accordingly.

This is my first time using InDesign; I've learnt how to set up a new book document with pages as you can see here:

I simply just typed the number of pages I wanted(In this case four because I needed a front, back and double spread page). I also picked the A3 type paper due to my research leading me to see that children's books are normally bigger then adult books with their pages containing much more images and content.

As you can see I've already scaled the picture to properly fit the print setup. But if I hadn't it would've bled to the outside of the borders which in turn would make the book look slanted or  distorted.

Here are both my books; one is printed with the pages 'bleeding' out of the border(Left) and the other is properly formatted(Right).

I chose the font 'Hobo Std':

As you can see I chose it due to it's fu and formal look; the curved font connotes to the audience that this book is for children but the boldness of the font connotes a smart, formal look.  

I was going to choose the 'Brush Script Std' font but I decided against it due to the possibility that some of the audience may not be able to read font in this style.

I also considered the 'Bookman Old Style' but I chose not to have it; simply because I did not feel it stood out as much as the 'Hobo Std' font choice. 

As you can see in the image below there are white margins where the image would be cut off and thus there would be more empty space/stylistic choices such as roses or petals coiling around the empty space. You can also see an example of this below.

I did not choose to have any empty space for my book as I felt the more content I could fit on the page would mean that a child would pay attention to the book for longer. 

I am pleased with the outcome of this project. The positives are that the spread page I made came out well and captured the style I was going for. I am also pleased with how I incorporated my concept art into the spread page. I am not pleased about the background colouring of my spread page as some parts of it still don't look coloured in I'm also not pleased with the front cover but this was mainly down to me focusing on other aspects of the project when I should've focused on the front cover. But I am pleased with the knowledge I've learnt about many program software such as learning about colour layers, the RGB CMYK settings and nearly everything I had learnt about In Design which will definitely come in useful later. Overall I would say that the positives outweigh the negatives.

I feel as though the intended audience would enjoy this work due to me basing most of the artwork on already existing art that has proved successful at entertaining children. I also feel that the contrasting artwork would be able to keep a child's attention as the cat is interesting to look at and stands out against the background.

Both the Pepper Pig book and my page have similar art styles for the main character. This is due to the fact they are both bold and have distinct outlines. The backgrounds are different in the sense that Pepper Pig has an style that matches with the main characters whilst my background is a different, more hand drawn style. Colour wise both pieces of work are very similar as they both contain a mixture of dark and light colours. Lastly both Scampy and Pepper Pig are both smiling and connoting a sense of happiness and fun.

If I could change anything about my work I would make the background look a lot less rough and coloured in a little more consistently. I would also try to tweak the font to make it look much more kid friendly and fun(For example the font below). I would do this by possibly changing the colour for each letter in the sentence.