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Digital graphics evaluation
- 2. Use this template to help you evaluate your project. You should give specific details about your work. You should provide both written and visual examples to explain your project. You should find areas to praise in your work. Be specific about why you think they are good or why you are proud of them. You should also find areas that could be improved. Look for areas that you could make better if you went back to them. Be specific about what you would improve. Add additional slides as you need to. Don’t be restricted by what is here. Any blank slides should be deleted before submission.
- 3. Does your final product reflect your original intentions?• Storyboards/flat plans: • There are quite a few differences when comparing my finished work to my storyboards, as the storyboards were essentially just sketches they lack the detail I added to my pages in production. For example, page 4 is a lot more minimalist in comparison to my finished version and also in pages 6, 7, 8 and 9 I have 5 compartments in the shoe shelf whereas originally and in my final production they only have 4. • The most drastic differences with my storyboards in comparison to my finished pages are just literally where I put my text on the image or how much detail I added such as the lamp and the wallpaper rip in page 4. I also find that the scale of the details in the images can differ, for example the table on the storyboard version of page 4 has only a few main focuses with the table in the background whereas the finished version has more • So, I would say that my storyboard does reflect how I wanted that pages illustration to look as there were not drastic changes between that and the final product Storyboard plan of page 4 Finished Page 4 Storyboard plan of page 6 Finished Page 6
- 4. Does your final product reflect your original intentions? • Planning: • With the planning of my production, I retrieved reference images through the internet to look at other art for the story of ‘The Elves and the Shoemaker’. The search came up with images from books that have a clear variety of techniques like drawn, digital art and some even look painted. I think that my elf characters resembles in some sense the one I have exampled below because they both appear childlike and petite in appearance. I have kept with the original intention of having two elves like in my story being a boy and girl with colourful hair, so that it is gender neutral and quite magical. I also think that the elves stand out because my colour scheme is quite natural and earthy so giving the elves some colourful features may make the reader like them more. • However I think that my elves are more original because the on the example image the elves have larger heads and more Chibi-like bodies (Japanese style)
- 5. How well have you constructed your images? • With the clothing as before I stated that I preferred to make them with the polygonal lasso, this I because on page one I didn’t. The vest is formed with a rectangular shape as the main section and then some smaller rectangular shapes warped to appear as the short shoulder sleeves, it appears soft and cloth-like. On the other hand on page 6 he has changed the clothes he wears and the waistcoat he wears is supposed to be a more detailed, wealthier version of the vest seen previously this is done with the polygonal lasso tool and I like how it looks more. Yet on the right side of the waistcoat it appears jagged and too sharp so, in comparison I believe that I could have constructed that image better if I had softened it up slightly but not so he appears blobby. I do prefer using the polygonal lasso tool for on clothing but on this one occasion I believe I could have constructed it better. • Considering that I haven’t really used that many images from the internet and that I made most of them with the techniques I mentioned I do believe I constructed them well because I only really had my storyboard as a reference.
- 6. How well have you constructed your images? • I believe my images are well constructed in the sense that they look the way I intended them too • The rotoscoped image is sharp and looks like the subject I rotoscoped (Lee Pace). • The shape task on the other hand is supposed to be the opposite, there are a lot of circles that I have warped and softened to form the body of the sloth. I think putting a gradient on the body of the sloth was a good idea because it shows the shading on the body and looks less blocky • I think one of the best constructed pieces on the shape task is the detail on the tree and the sloth’s facial features but the background could be better constructed and less blobby. • I think the best constructed part of the rotoscoped piece is the shading because it appears where it does on the original image but the background is dull and because it is a studio image the lacking in light surrounds the subject and it isn’t just on his face.
- 7. How well have you used text to anchor your images • I believe that with the story that I had and the images I produced that it is well balanced but there is one particular occasion where it is an example. On page five the story talks about the shoemaker cutting out the leather, going to bed and waking up to see the shoes but the actually illustration just shows him waking up seeing the shoes. I did this because on page one you see the leather the shoemaker has just cut and then in page two you see them sleeping, I didn’t want to repeat these pages and I only wanted eleven pages of illustration so I couldn’t do all three. This image seems like the best to refer to for this particular part of the story as it shows the gradual development of the character and the surroundings before the scene is edited to suit the characters situation (newfound wealth). Page 1 Page 2 Page 5
- 8. How well have you used text to anchor your images • The pen tool on Photoshop came in handy when I had a lot of detail in a certain image or only one space which I didn’t want to use because I had done before. So, I would in some form using the pen and text tool shape a text box around certain features of the image. For example, in the image below there is plenty of space to place the text but the text is presented on the table and it is slanted to the left this is because the text is present in the section of the table where the light from the window highlights it and I didn’t want to put it in an obvious average place. This has presented me with a good place to present my text, I liked using this tool as it attached the text to the image and almost made it seem like the text was present in the scene. • I made sure that my text was easy to read due to the age of my audience, so I made the font easy to read. Also due to the fact that my text moves to fit on different areas of the page it means that it is going to be on different objects of various different colours. To make sure that the text is readable on all the areas of the page I made the font white with a black outline so the colour of the subject it is on wouldn’t matter.
- 9. Is your product suitable for your audience? • In my proposal I stated that I wanted my book to be 10-12 8x8 inch pages with 4 to 8 lines of the story on and with my completed book I have 11 pages for the story not including the front page (all 8x8 inch) with a maximum of 7 lines of the story. I think this is a good amount of text form my target audience to either learn to read from or be read to by someone else. • I aimed my book at unisex English speaking 1-4 year olds living in areas such as Australia, UK, America and Canada with the all-class nursery type of demographic. I think this is a good demographic to have because most parents will buy some form of story book for their children as amusement, even now that stories have gone digital parents are still purchasing books to read to their children or have them learn. • My story is suitable in a sense that it isn’t violent, it doesn’t have dark themes or bad language and my images aren’t graphic in any fashion. But considering it was a folktale with a lot of old English I did have to edit the story so that it was simple and short enough from my target audience to read.
- 10. What do you like/dislike about the techniques you have used? • I have used two techniques in my production on Photoshop, those are rotoscoping and shaping. I have on one occasion with the scissors on page 1 got an image from the internet and rotoscoped around them because I knew that earlier in production that I would not be able to produce some scissors from scratch that would look as good as it does rotoscoped. I felt it was okay to do this as scissors are such a common household object and they do look quite similar to each other and are formed of basic shapes, I did this because I didn’t want them to be too detailed and draw too much attention in the scene. That is the only time I have taken an image from the internet to use, the rest of my images are completely original. I used shaping for features like the face and hands as they are quite circular and I used the polygonal lasso for the hair or the clothes as they appear sharper. • I preferred to use the polygonal lasso tool as I could construct a shape I wanted and it would be sharp and clean cut. The shapes on the other hand sometimes when warping appear too blobby or unnatural on the scene but the lasso tool can make the images seem jagged and rough. I prefer to use the lasso tool to conjure up my own shapes but I wanted to have a good balance of sharp and soft in my images, an example of this is with the shoes. For them I would use a two rounded rectangles and then warp the shapes and merge them to take the shape of a boot. I would then add details with the polygonal lasso such as the shoe sole, the light reflecting of it and any shading. The laces would be a line shape put in a zig zag order as if they were in the boot, also in some cases the boot have a fur top which would be a lasso formed shape. If the object I was making in the scene was not a boot I wouldn’t have added as much detail
- 11. What do you like/dislike about the techniques you have used? I used the polygonal lasso tool to make sharp, pointed shapes such as the hair or the clothes. This was a good tool to use because I could make my own shapes rather than having to warp existing ones but I did find that sometimes it could take to long to form the shape I was looking for. I used the paintbrush tool to fill in any sections that exposed the background, this was a good last resort if certain shapes didn’t fit where I needed them to. One thing I didn’t like about this tool was how bumpy it would appear in comparison to the smoothness or sharpness of the other shapes within the illustration. I used the eyedropper tool to sample colors from other pages that I needed to include in others, this came in handy when I moved onto another page but needed the same palette for my colour scheme. I used the shape tool to construct the faces and bodies of my characters among many others subjects, if I didn’t have this tool I would have typically only used the polygonal lasso tool and this would have made the illustrations seem too pointed and not quite cartoony enough for what I was going for. I used the pen tool to construct a text box around the certain details of my illustration and then the text tool to add in the certain part of the story that will be suitable for that scene. I liked the pen tool as it gave me some form of freedom with my text as I didn’t have to create a whole new page for it and it can seem more involved with the story. I used the perspective option with my shapes quite frequently for page 2, this is because that page view for the audience is at an angle that the windows and table features had to be tweaked to fit in. I liked this tool as it helped me with that scene though it did take me quite a while to get used to. I used the warp tool to tweak the shapes so that they take the form of something I needed them to in the scene, for example the curtain on page 6 had to be warped so it looked like it was draped across it in a droopy way. This tool was handy and I used it frequently in most if not all of my illustrations because it allowed me to edit the shapes to appear the way I wanted without having to create one with the lasso tool as that would take to long.
- 12. What do you like/dislike about how your final product looks? • I like that my final product has just the right amount of illustrations to tell the story and also that considering the fact that I used similar looking scenes in my illustrations that I can make them appear like different places with the angles I presented them in or the details I added. • As I attempted to change the viewpoint illustration of the scene on page two I came to dislike it’s appearance. This is purely because I spent too much time trying to make it look right at that angle with the perspective tool that I came to the realisation that if I did it from a different more simple angle I could have put more detail onto the scene. I felt overall that I wasted time trying to make this scene seem correct when I could have done it from an average angle like the rest of my illustrations and just made it look better with the more time I had.
- 13. In these particular parts of the story I have technically used the same room for this scene because I didn’t want to create a new room for every illustration just to change the audience’s perspective. So what I have done here is in the scene on the left I have used the table that the shoemaker stands behind but at a different angle to show the scene on the right of the shoemaker selling a pair of shoes it is just technically an exchange at a different view for the audience. It gives the audience a change of perspective and a closer look as to how the shoemaker lived in his poverty without having to use the same boring scene. I also liked that because people are seeing this from a different angle so that I could add details they otherwise wouldn’t see such as the lamp and the wallpaper rip. In my book I also attempted a little game in some sense, this is that every scene has the spider in and on each illustration they have to spot him. I thought this would be a nice little challenge for the reader to do at the end of every page and it could also spark their interest and make them more observant as to what is in the scene. What do you like/dislike about how your final product looks?
- 14. Why did you include the content you used? • I included the images I did to make audience feel as if they were involved with the story rather than just observing it, this can be seen in page 9 where the shoemaker and his wife have made the elves some clothes and shoes. I made this image as if they were presenting what they had made to the audience so that they felt more included in the story, I also included them looking in the direction of the reader so they felt as if they played a part in the story. • I chose the font that I did as it thought it was easier to read in comparison to some more complex curly or even historically accurate fonts for the time in which more story is based. But this is a children’s book and for it to be a children’s book it would have to be readable to them so I used times new roman this is quite and easy font to read and it doesn’t have a particular curly or flicked style this is what I intended for with my font because if it was to fancy or even italic my target audience would struggle to read it. If this book was for older children I could maybe experiment more with the font, I could possibly go for something like ‘Lucida handwriting’ or ‘Curlz MT’ but for my book this would be too complicated for my demographic to read unless being read to. • I made my font white on my illustrations with a black outline so it would be readable on any colour of the background I placed it upon, this was proved to be quite helpful as I did move my fonts around the illustrations a lot to fit around the detail I included within. Examples of how my text appeared on many different surfaces.
- 15. Why did you include the content you used? • I felt as if I had a particular colour scheme with my illustrations which I wanted to do as it gave the story it’s own artistic flare. For example, at the beginning of the story form page one through to five the interior of the shoemakers house appear to have the same décor and furniture style but I changed this at page six as the shoemakers income was far greater. The original brown coloured walls changed to a green colour and then I also introduced another room with a red wall, the furniture itself is commonly wood as I found this was historically accurate and that added to my colour scheme. • The only real effect I used in my illustrations were ‘stroke’ which I did frequently on areas I felt needed to be defined so that they didn’t just blend in amongst the background, this was useful as my colour scheme sometimes layered upon one another like different shades of brown and the object on top of the background didn’t stand out enough. I would add this stroke on a one pixel thickness with little to full opacity depending on the subject this can be seen Main colour scheme: With stroke Without stroke
- 16. What signs, symbols or codes have your used in your work? • The meaning behind my location in the story is the fact that it is purely based around this shoemaker’s shoe shop which doubles up as his home. This is quite historical in a sense that with the days in which this story is set you home and shop if you had one would be the same building but nowadays you can own a house and then walk or drive down to a shop you may own depending on the distance between you home and shop. People can still live above their shops or turn their home into a shop but it is far more common for them to be separate buildings now than when the shoemaker had his shop in this story. • The reason behind the style of my illustrations is that I wanted it to appear realistic but not too realistic, so it has a sort of cartoony vibe to it. So I made my characters have the common facial features that you would see on a person but not as complex or detailed as if you were looking at a real life person for example my characters do not have noses, eyelashes, eyebrows or separated fingers with finger nails. • My characters are cartoony in a sense that they have sort of mitten hands, black teardrop eyes, black mouths and if showing a red tongue. The characters differ in a sense that two are elves and the shoemaker and his wife are humans, with this the elves have pointed pixie-like ears opposed to rounded ones with colourful hair as in the story of pink and green. The pink haired elf is a girl and her hair is presented in two neat buns on top of her head and the green-haired elf is a boy with sharp short hair ruffled on the top of his head and finally I gave the elves rosy cheeks to imply their child-like innocence.
- 17. What representations can be found in your work? • How are men, women or children shown in your work? Does your work feature different ages, races, social groups or religions? Does a lack of any variety of character types create its own representation? • Gender wise women in my story/illustrations are represented how they would have been in the time that the story is set. The women wear bright clothes or have their hair in their stereotypical colour palette of pinks, yellows, pastel blues etc. the female elf and the shoemakers wife both wear dresses this is another typical representation of the gender that would be present when the story was written. The men on the other hand are wearing much darker colours like browns, black, greens and balancing them out with whites or crème colours, men would wear these types of colours both now and when the story was set/written because it is not an uncommon colour to wear with suits/waistcoats/trousers etc. • Technically there are no children represented in my work unless you count the elves but as a mythical creature they are typically represented as child-like in appearance but to define them as children would be wrong because no ages are known. The shoemaker himself with grey hair appears as part of the older generation which I believe he represents well and his wife may a little younger represents the same age group, other than that my work doesn’t really represent that many age groups which I expected with only four characters. • My story doesn’t represent any races, social groups or religions but I suppose I could mention that in the original story the shoemaker is religious in a sense that it states that he prays every-night and that may be were the elves came from. But in my edited version of the story I did not include that part so it has no real importance. The only differing race from the shoemaker are the elves because they are in sense a mythical race but any other races that are non-fictional aren’t mentioned.
- 18. The shoemaker is quite an elderly man with glasses and grey hair, with quite a kind nature, in the story he represents a man in an older generation. The shoemaker’s wife is referred to by this name throughout the story, she wears dresses and sews as she makes the clothes for the elves. This is a typical historical representation of a woman in any story set around this time or early. The female elf has bright pink hair and wears dresses also she is neatly presented in my illustrations, they are as elves quite childlike in appearance but their age range from the story is unknown. The male elf has a messier appearance when in comparison to the female elf, this may in some sense represent gender stereotypes as she cares more for her appearance than he does.
- 19. What style have you employed in your products? • My visual style with character representation can resemble that of ‘The little princess’ art by Tony Ross because his characters are also quite simplistic in appearance and the female characters tend to wear skirts or dresses and the boys with trousers and shirts which sticks to the stereotype and is historically accurate. • I looked into the book ‘I want a friend’ in the little princess series by Tony Ross to consider it’s art style in comparison to mine, the techniques he used to create his characters differ from mine as I used Photoshop to create digital art and to me it looks like Tony Ross has drawn them and coloured them in with watercolour or paints. But aside from that difference the facial features and clothing are quite similar, the characters in this story have simple eyes and a black line mouth with sharp spiked hair like mine but with one addition, they have a nose and eyelashes. • This shows to me that I have employed a very minimalist style to create my characters and locations and they are quite cartoony in comparison with the shapes I have used to construct them rather than filling in lines. I chose and like this style because it gives my work a more original look that no other child’s book I have seen can compare to.
- 20. What style have you employed in your products? • My work was influenced by the Gruffalo with the intention to stick to a certain colour scheme throughout my illustrations and to keep a minimal amount of characters. • One thing that separates my work from that of the Gruffalo is that the techniques used to construct the illustrations for this book differ from mine. My images were made digitally on Photoshop whereas by the look of it the Gruffalo was constructed through drawings or paintings then scanned and made digital. • I used this book as an influence as it is a popular children’s book that has sold a lot of copies and has good reviews on Amazon.
- 21. What were the strengths and weaknesses of the pre-production and planning • I think that the planning and pre-production helped me decide what I wanted to achieve with my work. This is because I didn’t really know how to go about my art style, so first I looked into the folktales knowing that I wanted to do a ‘Brothers Grimm’ story because they are traditional and popular like sleeping beauty, Hansel and Gretel and the one I chose ‘ The Shoemaker and the Elves’. I chose this story as it was one I was familiar with but others knew little of which meant I could be original with it. I then did a test page to figure out the art style that I wanted throughout my illustrations, I decided as it was planned in my second spider diagram to make them cartoony and cute in some sense.
- 22. What were the strengths and weaknesses of the pre-production and planning • I think a strength about my planning was with my moodboards because they show different art style with existing versions of the story on different platform such as illustrations, videos and even online games. It also shows the different plans I had for my titles and the various designs each of them had. • Another strength about my pre-production was how small in scale the elves were going to be in comparison to the shoemaker and his wife because I found that quite frequently the elves are only just a little bit smaller than them but I wanted them dramatically smaller so I managed to make this work with scaling differences and the right angles. • One weakness about my planning and pre-production was that I didn’t test page any locations for my illustrations so when it came to production I had to conjure up my backgrounds which varied a little in style and colour as the story went on. • Other than that I think I managed my time for this quite well considering I kept up to the standard I planned with each page and started with the intention of doing eleven pages and doing them with the addition of a title/front page.
- 23. Historical and cultural context • How does your work compare to what has come before? What other similar products have existed in the past? What current products exist? • The Elves and the shoemaker book made in 2005 illustrated by Jim LaMarche is a popular existing adaption of the original story by the brothers Grimm. It has sold many digital and paper copies and was printed in hardback, the techniques used to create the illustrations in this book was painting and LaMarche is very popular for his paintings so it was a good sell. I think my work is more modern in comparison to this and this one looks more professional and detailed but I was going for a minimalist style with a different technique. • A flip up edition of the Elves and the Shoemaker by Alison Edgeson in 2007 also using a different technique to mine as it looks pencil drawn and coloured with a bright colour scheme throughout. I think my work is softer and darker in appearance with the techniques and colour scheme I used but they are both original in there own way.
- 24. Historical and cultural context • Two other versions I found of this story were ones in German which would have been the original language for the book as the authors of the original story (brothers Grimm) were German. I could not find a book from the time at which it was first written but I have the title it would have been in German ‘Bradex Der Schuhmacher und die Heinzelmannchen’. • The other version is the oldest I could find on Amazon which was published in 1965 written by Vera Southgate and illustrated by Robert Lumley it is a hardback book that would appear rare as it is being sold for £299.00. obviously because of how old this version is mine would appear more modern and the techniques used for the older one are much more traditional for stories in that time then the present.
- 25. Peer Feedback • Summarise peer feedback and discuss – Responses you agree with – Responses you disagree with