[Project 5] Complete Documentation

For our last and final project, we are tasked with creating a book with any form of written literature and creating visual illustrations that match and enhance the content.

Inspiration

I’m having some trouble narrowing down exactly what I want to do. A couple of ideas include: 1) children’s story, 2) poem with visual illustrations, 3) short story with illustrations.

Children’s Story Inspiration

Other Inspiration

Checkpoint 4/10

I finalized my idea to be a collection of different quotes, excerpts, and poems. All the words that I would want to use are here. I’m not planning on using everything though, just the underlined ones.

I also started some preliminary sketches.

As I was formatting all the pages I wanted to use, I started thinking of the visual illustrations that I wanted to include. At first, I wanted the art to have a more serious theme, since some of the quotes are on the more profound side, but as I was sketching out the rough plans for each page, I started wondering if I could make the art a little more “cute” and still have them reflect the quotes.

I started playing with this idea a little more, and created two characters to include in my book (a koala, K, and a penguin, P).

Digital Iterations

After I tried figuring out the placement for the above quote, I realized that I accidentally added two extra pages (I had neglected to count the cover and the back cover as part of the 12 pages). Thus, I ended up taking out the first quote and starting with quote #11.

For this quote I wanted to draw something that conveyed a vast space for the “bird in flight” to search the “skies for dreams.” The two characters (K and P) are in a hot air balloon, traveling the endless skies.

The next quote that I worked on was quote #14, which is from The Little Prince.

For this next quote, I wanted to showcase the meaning of quote through the two characters doing something “grand” that might otherwise be mundane. I decided to have K help P fly, since penguins can’t fly. I thought it fit with the quote since it depicts P finally being able to fly, using an ordinary object (a kite).

For my cover, I wanted to do something more simple, so I had K and P hold a sign that would have the title of the book. I couldn’t decide on a name yet, so I just chose “A Collection of Words” for now.

Post Interim-Critique

Most of my feedback was regarding the style of the art. Most people felt that the shading for the kite spread didn’t fit in with the first spread, especially since there was no shading for K and P. I decided to redraw the beach setting for the kite spread, and reused the blue color I used for the sky.

I ended up with the illustration below, and thought it fit much better with the first spread.

In the next class, I spoke with Julia and she gave a suggestion about the grid for my spreads. Since I wasn’t following a grid, she suggested I completely break free from a grid structure, which gave me the idea of shaping the words of the quotes to different objects in the illustrations.

For the first spread, I decided to shape the words so they formed two bird shapes, which aligns with what the quote states too.

Then, for the kite spread, I shaped the quote to the shoreline. I also moved the author and book title to the bottom of the quote.

The next spread I worked on was for quote 9, which is a poem by Shel Silverstein. The poem is narrated by a person who strayed to close to a lion and is writing the poem from inside the lion. Thus, for this next quote, I drew a lion with noise effects coming from its stomach, and P holding the lion’s mouth open looking very stressed. The idea was that K is inside the lion, and P is frantically trying to get him out.

I struggled with the placement of the words for this one, since it didn’t match with the formatting of the other spreads. My initial idea was the have the words edge closer to the lion, then have the last line placed on the lion to convey the idea that that line is in the lion’s stomach.

I asked Kaylee for some advice and she suggested flipping the lion so that it was facing the other way and on the left side of the spread, and angle the lines so it appears as if the lion is speaking the poem, or the poem is coming from the lion’s mouth.

The next spread I worked on was for quote 4, which is a conversation between Pooh and Piglet from “Winnie the Pooh.” In this conversation, Pooh states that “today” is his “favorite day.” So in this spread, I wanted to create a joyful scene between K and P that shows them enjoying life. I ended up drawing a scene in which K is sitting on top of P as they’re sledding down a snowy hill.

In terms of the placement of the quote, I decided to angle it in the same direction as K and P to give the impression that the quote is similar to the action lines and emphasize that K and P are sledding down a hill.

The last spread I worked on was for quote 1, which was taken from Alice in Wonderland. In this quote, Alice states that it is not use thinking about what happened yesterday, because she was a “different person then.” I illustrated this more literally, and drew K and P in a “conversation” where P explains that he was born from an egg, and he used to be an egg. K is confused and wonders if he was also an egg in the past.

I had a hard time deciding how to place the text, but then I thought it would be fun to have the text follow the general shape across the spread, and it turned out pretty fun. One suggestion I got from Kaylee was the have the text stay on the blue sky, so I moved the tree more to the left.

Lastly, I decided for the cover that I wanted the front and the back to just be one continuous image. I knew I should keep the theme of the illustration to be similar to the spreads in the book. I thought about having K and P engaged in actions that represent what the content of the book. Thus, I had K reading a book and P holding a pencil and looking at an easel with the title of the book on it.

I added a paw print from K and a flipper print from P as a final touch.

Post-critique

All of the other booklets were really cool—it was nice to see how everyone’s booklets had fleshed out since the interim critique.

I liked this critique because not only did we get to eat during the critique, the atmosphere was a lot more relaxed. I also liked how we could type our feedback to our classmates because it kind of forced everyone to say something, and also moved the critique along at a faster pace. The only thing that could probably be different for the future (although I’m not sure how, exactly) is that sometimes we would start to type our feedback in the middle of someone’s presentation, and then we would miss part of their book.