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EVALUATION

The audience for my work is the children’s market – detailed illustrations mean it can reach older children; bright bold colours make it still relevant for younger children. The colouring pages are simple for the characters with bold shapes for younger children to be able to enjoy and the smaller details of the backgrounds and words, again, make it suitable for older children. This shows how I can apply my work to suit a wide target audience within the children’s market.

An option for potential uses of the book is to get it self-published as I have made and hand bound it myself, so I could keep it as a limited number of books available. However I would ideally like to be published by a publisher, so I could use this book as a prototype to show publishers the work I can produce. Another option, if those routes are unsuccessful, would be to start a kickstarter for me to be able to produce and sell the book myself.

There are opportunities for further development with the work I have produced because it began with the idea of fictional characters who all live on the same island together. They have a collective name ‘The Bungles’ meaning I could aim to take the idea further than a children’s book, for example I could make merchandise with the characters on, toys could be made of the characters and even an animation could be made showing what The Bungles get up to, on Bungleton island.

My goals for my career are to get published and become a professional children’s book illustrator, or to generally work within the children’s market in some way. So my FMP work is a good starting point to show clients and employers what I am capable of and that I can produce work that is suitable for the market.

The most enjoyable part of the module was firstly the artwork stage of producing the book. Working traditionally feels the most natural to me and I enjoy seeing pieces develop from an idea, to sketch, to a finished illustration and bringing the characters to life. I also enjoyed the book binding stage, that’s when it all starts to feel real and the hard work pays off, to see my work become a finished product.

An important thing I learned this module was the effectiveness of making a detailed schedule prior to production. Having a weekly plan made time management a lot easier as I could simply refer to the schedule and know what I needed to do without having to plan each week individually. It also meant that I could see clearly if I were running behind and how much time I had left to work on the task I was currently on. Having referred to the schedule and following it (some weeks I swapped around depending on what I wanted to work on first or at that time, however the time scale for each task was kept the same), has meant that I managed to get the book bound and finished in plenty of time before the deadline, to allow myself to make final touches, make sure the blog posts are up to date and to finish the PDF. In the schedule I also included a week to catch up on anything that I fell behind with or for any mistakes that needed rectifying, which I am glad I did because during the printing process I was met with some hurdles with the printer, which took a few days to figure out. So, having that week meant that I could take my time fixing any printing errors, without it causing too much stress and delaying any other parts of the work.

Some pages ended up losing edges of the text on the colouring pages, after trimming the book. The words are still visible, but some parts of letters are off the edge. I tried rectifying this during the trial print run, by increasing the bleed from 3mm to 6mm on each side, however it didn’t seem to help at all. So, in future, when making designs I will ensure the design is extended way past any areas that are important and that I wouldn’t want to lose in the cutting process.

Overall, I’m pleased with the final outcome, although there are small areas I would change if I could, I’ve learned from these (as mentioned above) and the module has given me practice in the children’s book market and producing images for books, preparing me for entering the children’s illustration market.

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WEEK 15 - INSIDE IMAGES OF FINAL BOOK

Continued from the previous post.

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WEEK 15 - INSIDE PAGES OF FINAL BOOK

Some photographs of each spread in the book, showing the final illustrations and colouring pages together.

Some edges of the words were cut off during the trimming of the book, which I tried rectifying on InDesign, however it didn’t seem to help. So, in future when creating the designs I will ensure the patterns extend further from the text to ensure no text is lost.

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WEEK 14 - CLOSE UPS OF THE FINAL BOOK

Here are some close up images of the finished book, to show the small details and give a feel of what the paper and print quality is like and the textures of the pages. I also included a close up off the spine to show what the glue bind looks like with the cover on top, as well as the edges of the book to show the crisp corners.

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WEEK 14 - FINAL BOOK AND POSTER

After binding the book, I glued the poster into the back of the book, but with a very small amount of glue so it can be easily removed and displayed on a wall.

I had originally designed the map to have a white border, however I cut that off after printing because it looked messy and as though I hadn’t trimmed the image properly. Having no border gives a more professional finish too.

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WEEK 13 - HAND GLUE BINDING

I decided to glue bind the books by hand because for a previous book I used the glue binding machine and found that it wasn’t very flexible and made it difficult to lay the book flat, without bending the pages. So, I thought using PVA would be more flexible.

To help reinforce some strength into the spine, I used a scalpel to cut into the spine roughly 1cm apart and then placed some linen thread in the spaces. The thread adds more strength without restricting the flexibility within the spine as it bends easily with the glue and paper. 

I then layered PVA glue along the spine, making sure the layers were thin and even to prevent clumps of glue along the spine.

To further reinforce the strength in the spine, I used a very thin paper and cut it to the length and width of the spine and glued a few layers on using the PVA again. This helped to strengthen the spine even more and again, doesn’t reduce the flexibilty as the paper is so thin and bends easily.

Once the glue had dried, I glued on the cover and clamped the books down whilst they dried to ensure they had a flat crisp finish.

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WEEK 12 - PRINTING OF FINAL BOOK

Once organising the images in InDesign, I printed all the spreads. Some are shown above in the order they were printed and laid out in InDesign.

The printing quality turned out well - I was originally concerned that the images would lose the textured quality of the traditional methods I made them with, however you can see very clearly the details, marks and textures of the coloured pencil.

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WEEK 12 - PAGE LAYOUT BOOKLET

Before printing the book, I made a quick booklet with the page content written in the format that I want it to print. This helped me visualise the layout and place the images on the correct pages and in the correct order on InDesign.

This was necessary because I am glue binding it meaning each page is individually cut out and stacked to then glue together, meaning it would be presented in the wrong order in the book if the images aren’t backed onto the right correspodning image.

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WEEK 11 - FINAL MAP DESIGN

Having decided on the shapes, font and colours to use, I then added the text “MAP OF....” to make it clear and this if I recall correctly, is sometimes used on fantasy maps, but I also thought it works well and makes it more of an introduction title.

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WEEK 11 - MAP TITLE EXPERIMENTS

The island where the Bingles live, is called ‘Bungleton’ which isn’t made clear in the book, so I thought about including a title on the map. 

I knew what font I wanted to use, which was my own font I designed and used for the book. This way the text on the map will tie in nicely to the book and make it consistent.

I then experimented with colours. I tried purple, orange and white with black outlines, none of which I loved, but the orange was my favourite, so I then edited the orange to have a white outline, which made the text stand out really well, but looks softer and more fitting with the style of the illustrations and text from the book. I used the same orange that I used on the cover page of the book, which again ties them together and creates consistency.

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WEEK 10 - CHARACTER SPACE DESIGNS (for drawing Bungles onto the map)

As an alternative to the stickers, I wanted to have blank spaces on the map for the children to draw each character on the map themselves. This makes it more personal to them and the drawing side is fun and creative so will hopefully be a good alternative to the stickers.

I began with just adding white circles next to each environment area, intending to let the children draw their own interpretations of the characters, however these looked too small to be able to draw characters in them and making them any larger would block too much of the map.

I then experimented with outlined shapes of the characters, which just didn’t look right, some shapes looked detailed and others like blobs (this depended on the shapes of the characters). So, I then tried looser outlines of each character, so no sharp edges to make them match and seem more coherent. Yet this looked messy and unclear.

Finally, I went back to the outlined versions and simply outlined them in black, which worked much better because it made the outlines clearer and shows which character is which slightly more, without making them too detailed and obvious.

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WEEK 10 - MAP OF BUNGLETON POSTER

I stuck with watercolour and coloured pencil for the base of the map and then scanned and edited it in the same way I did for the colour illustrations for the book.

I then drew on the location symbols (used on the colouring pages as clues to help the children located where each Bungle lives on the map) digitally to ensure I could make it crisp and stand out.

I still need to edit out some pencil marks and may make the line work of the symbols, more faded or use a different colour as the black seems slightly too harsh.

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WEEK 10 - STICKER OUTSOURCING RESEARCH

My intentions were to include a sticker pack of each character, for children to stick the characters onto the map to show where they live (there is a symbol on each colouring page to show the children where they are from because they symbol will match symbols on the map to show the environment). 

I did look into outsourcing stickers during the Planning and Pitch module and found the sites I looked at, to be rather expensive and out of my price range. However, I was recommended Awesome Merch for their quality and reasonable pricing, but I found the same price issue with this site (show in the image above). I input the minimum requirements of designs that I would need for my sticker packs (I have 10 characters, so would need 10 designs on each sheet) and the price is £180, it also only allows a minimum order of 100 sheets and this a much larger amount than I would need.

Therefore, I am steering away from the sticker sheet option again. As an alternative, I had planned in the last module to digitally draw onto the map colourable icons of each character in their locations, for children to colour them in. However, this would make the clue on each colouring page unnecessary because the characters would already be clearly in their locations on the map. So, I have decided that I will simply draw on white circles/shapes onto the map in each habitat area, for the children to then draw the characters in themselves. This makes it much more interactive and personalised too. It could also encourage creativity in the children as they draw the characters. Also, the book already has plenty of colouring pages, so this mixes it up and would be a great alternative to the stickers and still requires the audience to participate in figuring out where each character originates from.

Reference: (Awesome Merchandise, 2021)

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WEEK 9 - DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD

At the end of the book, I am going to have a double page spread of all the characters together to show them as a community. I had originally planned on this being done as a full colour illustration, however I decided to play about and trial it as a colouring page design instead, as an extra activity and it is also a more exciting colouring page compared to the fact pages.

This experiment ended up leading to a whole double page spread because I ended up loving how it was coming together!

I need to adjust the character in the middle so they line up better as they’ll be in the centre fold of the pages but other than that, I’m happy with this as the final spread. For the grass, water and mountains, I used the same patterns I used in the single character colouring designs, this also then links the colouring backgrounds to the world and it shows what the patterns are based on.

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WEEK 8 - TITLE EXPERIMENTS

For the title I have experimented with different options of colours for the text and whether it needs a outline to made it stand out from the different shades of the image behind it.

I tried different outlines, I didn’t want it to be too harsh against the rest of the cover, I also wanted it to be nice and bright like the illustrations.

I found that the colour block text looked best on top with white underneath but it need some sort of outline as the white blended into the white areas of the illustration behind. So I decided to test out the stripes on the what shadow text, like on the colour page texts. This then prompted me to colour in the stripes as though they’d been coloured, like they will be inside the book. This is the best combination so far, however I feel as though it still doesn’t sit quite right so I will continue to develop this and try other options and combinations.

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WEEK 7 - FRONT AND BACK COVER DEVELOPMENT

Following on from the unsuccessful digital experiment, I continued with the watercolour and coloured pencil version of the cover and am pleased with the result.

The colours are vibrant and will be made more so once I digitally edit them, these are the raw scans and even here I’m happy with them already. The cover will now also be consistent with the inside illustrations.

I will be adding the title and blurb digitally also.

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WEEK 7 - DIGITAL COVER EXPERIMENT

I started drawing out the cover digitally, however having added a coloured pencil texture on the top right to the ‘Nooshus’ character, I realised that the style wouldn’t be fitting and consistent with the inside colour illustrations. Althought I like the way this was starting to look, I thought it would be better to stick with the traditional mediums to ensure the illustrations had stylistic consistency.