OUIL 603 Summative Statement

Through past and present modules, I have taken on projects from different areas of the design field – from book illustration to branding and advertising – I have given all a try. Though interested in all aspects of design work and grateful whenever new opportunities arise, character and narrative are no doubt at the heart of my practice.

A lot of the work I enjoy doing also have children as the target audience, so it only seemed right that I focus my final project on the creation of children’s publications and related products. For my Final Major Project I decided to create a children’s pop-up book based around the African Savanna and the Maasai people because it is something that I've not done before and would therefore challenge my image making/production skills and allow me to venture outside of my knowledge.

From the very beginning, I have always had a fascination with seeing the world and learning new things from different places and people. The idea of taking myself and young readers to faraway places and learning about different cultures really appeals to me because this is one way that children can see the many ways people around the world - though different in appearance - are alike. From a character designer standpoint I feel it is also important that I am able to portray a wide array of characters.

Through my future work in the publishing industry, and other related work (animation, hopefully), I wish to promote kindness, acceptance, and tolerance, among many other values.

OUIL 603 Project Report

Brief 1 (FMP) - The Savanna

Brief 2 - Layla's Liver Transplant

Brief 3 - Adventure T-shirts

Brief 4 - BAIL'16

Brief 5 - YCN Royal Opera House

Brief 6 - Love Birds

Brief 7 - AyasoBoutique

OUIL 603 Statement of Intent

Mishaps

Finally finished all 8 pages yesterday! I thought I would be done with it friday/saturday but it turned out I was being too ambitious, because it turns out I can't work that fast! Overall I'm really pleased with what I've produced, however there are some slight issues with the product:

On my second run to the print room - to print the other half of my book, the pages seem to be be slightly smaller than the first half I printed even though I've set the document size and everything else identical to the others - so thats a real bummer. Also, I stuck on some of the tabs incorrectly (see second pic) so I had to pull them off carefully, however it still left some glue residue on there. I decided to just cover them up with some excess paper because I can't afford to print again as I've still got plenty of work waiting for me to complete for the submission!

Another problem is that I miss calculated some of the pieces so they ended up slightly bigger than the page and actually poke out when closed (see pic 3) - But now that I have this copy, I would be able to reproduce the book and make adjustments accordingly. Just when I thought I wouldn't run into anymore troubles, I ran into another annoying matter; I used some white tack from the studio to stick the corners of the page down to the table so that it would lay flat as I photographed - it looked good like this (see in embedded issuu below) however this was not a good idea as I couldn't get the tack off the paper after I was done with it! (see pic 4). I ended up having to have my hand in the other photos keep the pages open - which makes it harder to use the camera! so forgive me if the pictures don't look as good.

Progress Update

To do:

• Digitise 2 more pages
• prepare files for printing on Mon drop in
• Photograph pop-ups for boards
• presentation boards for all briefs
• Project Report
• Summative Statement
• PDF Blog

Last Crit Ever!

Exciting but also saddening!

Really happy with the feedback I got - some really good suggestions for submission and also for the future! I think the main thing now is to complete all the pop-ups for my book (hopefully by tomorrow night) and create presentation boards for all of my briefs. I agree with Lauren that I feel I have really found a comfortable/natural way of digitising my work. Also glad that Lauren thinks 'I have demonstrated a greater understanding of making work' with my pop up book and paper cuts which 'shows how different my work can be'! In order to keep pushing my work, she suggested that in the future I should try combining more of handmade textures to my digital work, which is something that I have been wanting to do for the longest time. However due to the tight module time scales, I haven't really been able to! Hopefully, after uni I'll have more time to experiment to my hearts content! Overall, really good feedback and I'm excited to finally finish this module - not long now!

Decision time

Initially I was going to make additional products (a game of some sorts) to go with my book. However, this was before I realised that a pop up book in itself is already so time consuming and challenging to produce! (I really thought it was going to be a walk in the park). Rather than forcing it/doing it half heartedly, I've decided that I will not be making additional products that would need new imagery as I would like to use the time I have left to complete all 8 popups/pages of my book. Right now, I don't feel that making something else that would require more time than I have left is worth it - I don't want to compromise the quality of my work! Quality always trumps quantity! 

Phew, ok. Here's another page I'm currently working on:

Print day!

Development

Finalising Artwork!

Started digitising the artwork for my pop-up book today - finally!
I decided to try out a different-ish colouring style for this. I usually go straight to the shapes without outlining them, but I really enjoyed working with line for my ayasoB brief and wanted to use it again for this. I actually really like the outcome - looks more graphicy but I think it makes the artwork bolder and I think would work well for my book and the audience it's for!

Also decided to see how the text would look with it, so I did a little layout mock up and I like itttttt! The added handwritten type makes everything look less static. I've also decided that I'm making my page spreads a couple of centimetres bigger (35cm x 25cm when opened) than my dummy one because I feel that this is a nice size to hold and carry. I'm also going to keep the 'background' for this one fairly simple because this page introduces the character so I want the focus to be on the popup.

Here's another page! Really enjoying this!

Dummy Book Complete!

I'm behind schedule by 3 days - fudge!

BUT I'M GETTING THERE! WAHOOO!

To do list:

• Digitise all artwork
• Prepare files for printing
• Print (10th May 9AM)
• Cut and assemble pop-ups
• Propose/mockup product range
• Create presentation boards
• Project Report

Progress Feedback

Smaller briefs:

• Need to create presentation boards for each completed briefs:
• Keep boards simple and clear - as if presenting to a client.
• Post on blog - last post for each briefs.

FMP:

• Don't need to make actual book - think about pop-ups separately - as individual spreads.
• Focus on product range - crafting and quality rather than a single book.

Simplifying Popup Design

As mentioned in previous post, I'm struggling with some of the pop-ups I initially wanted to create because they are just too complicated for me right now. I took some popup books out from the library and decided to look at simpler mechanisms and use them to inspire the pages I'm struggling with. The compositions in these pages have been simplified a whole lot, making the main images a lot bolder - which is a good thing as it gives the pages a central focus and it's a lot easier for the eye to read - especially for children.

I'm beginning to feel really nervous as time is really catching up with me! I've moved my printing slot to the 10th, so hopefully I'll be more ready by then. I'll be using a similar process as my CoP3 project to create my illustrations for my pop up book - this is because I know the process really well and I can complete 2 pages of illustrations in a day, so hopefully that is enough time to finalise my designs before the 10th.

Dummy Pages

OH MY GOODNESS!!

I'm having a melt down. I haven't been feeling well these past couple of days but I have been trying to keep to my action plan.. but it isn't going as well I'd hoped. I basically now realise that making pop-ups is flippin hard! My room is a tip. There is paper everywhere. Working in 2D is so much easier - respect to those who work in 3D btw, they probably have soooooo much patience, but I guess this is the challenge of the project - I've been watching tutorials and trying to take apart (in my head) the mechanisms of existing pop ups that I've seen, but I think I'm still lacking the knowledge of how pop-ups work to be able to make really complex ones, which is what I wanted to do before I realised its impossible to do in the time I have left. I think I may have to think about my designs again and simplify some of them, because right now I'm only confident doing really simple, v-fold pop-ups.