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Making the product ready to PRINT

When it came to making the product ready for printing, I found that I had made a few mistakes when my work was submitted, mainly due to file formatting errors. I found that I hadn’t added a bleed or crop marks onto the documents, and the layouts were wrong.

These are some of the details that I had forgot to make sure were right on my final PDF. I also had to change the layout of my cover and book as the pages were saved as spreads instead of single pages.

#FMP

How I illustrated the book!

To make the illustrations for my book, I used Illustrator and I used the pen tool.

For my character design, the first thing I did was focus on the main character and draw her how I wanted the illustration style to look. Doing this helped me to work out what features I would use to make all my characters recognisable and look like they’re from the same book/style.

I chose to keep all the characters very simple, as although I would have liked to make them really detailed and in a style that i’m more comfortable with using and use more regularly, I had to be realistic about how much time I would have to finish everything and I wouldn’t have been able to finish it if I tried to over complicate the drawings.

For my character design inspiration, I wanted to keep all the characters similar to their film characters. I also wanted to keep their clothing similar to their characters, so I researched into the fashion of the film. (x) Although I kept the clothes designs very simple with the style and colour, I still tried to remain true to the original film and character’s looks.

My first illustration:

After I had designed my first character, I then made the other 3 main characters.

#FMP

Page layouts

For the layouts for my pages, I used inDesign. I wanted to keep with the typical comic book layout. I kept it really simple so it would be easy to read and good for people who are new to graphic audiences so it would appeal to the audience I set out to reach.

I originally had planned to have illustrations on about 25 out of the 28 pages, but with the time I had to finish the book along with the information that I needed to include, i rearranged my layout and cut down the amount of illustrated pages and added some pages with the information about the film etc.

#FMP

BOOK COVER

For my book colour, I kept with the same colour scheme from the inside of my book and used dark colours like purple and black. I chose a font which I used on the first page of my book, and used a typical magic/witch-y style font. I chose to use this just so the audience would be able to see a clear theme of magic etc even if they didn’t know the film. I used an image from the inside of the book so the audience can get an idea of what the inside of the book will look like and the sort of style of the book.

#FMP

Pages from FMP

These are some of my favourite pages from my finished FMP.

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EVALUTION

Overall, I enjoyed this project as we had complete freedom to do what we wanted with it and use all of our own ideas. Although, I did find it very stressful as I think that I set myself quite a lot of work to do over a short period of time.

RESEARCH For the research part of the project, I found that it was really helpful as it helped me to decide what I wanted to do. It helped me to narrow down a specific style that I wanted to use in my book, and showed me what was already out there and the sort of stuff that was popular in the graphic novel market. I found that this information really did help me, as although I wanted to make a graphic novel, I personally don’t own any or really like any as I’ve never come across any that have appealed to me. I hoped that would enjoy making one more than I enjoy reading one, and I wanted to make one which would appeal to people like me who struggle to find graphic novels that interest them.

MAKING THE BOOK At first, I really didn't enjoy making the book as I was feeling like I wouldn't be able to do it and I wasn't feeling very confident about the whole thing. I found that my original idea of hand drawing wasn't working out and it made me want to change my idea. After trying some different ideas on Illustator, I decided to stick with my idea and do everything digitally, which I’m really pleased that I chose to do. I think that it looked much better than my attempt and hand drawing it and it looked a little bit more professional.

TIME MANAGEMENT

As I knew that I had quite a lot of work to keep up with, I made a time plan to make sure I wouldn’t fall behind as I do sometimes struggle with keeping up with my work and end up rushing around last minute. For this project, I think I stuck to my time plan really well. I didn’t fall behind on any of my work and didn’t feel like I was rushing on the last few days to get everything done. The only thing that I felt rushed on was my poster for the End of year show, as I had to make this on deadline day. I would have liked to have left myself more time to improve the poster, but I am still pleased with how it looks.

DESIGN

I decided on a colour scheme that I would use throughout my book, which would mainly be purple and black. I wanted to use dark colours as they are the sort of colours most people associate with magic/witches/horror and things of similar themes and genres. I also used a colour scheme so that all the pages would be able to tie in well with eachother and all link.

For the layout, I kept with a simple comic book style page layout so that it would be clear and easy to read. I also added some boxes with the background story throughout the book so that people who were not familiar with the film would be able to understand what was going on.

As there is quite a lot of colour and details on all of my pages, I didn’t want to use an overpowering or busy font. I wanted the font to be easy to read and clear, and to stand out on the busy pages. I was originally going to use a comic book style font but I felt like it looked to much, so I kept it to a simple font.

AUDIENCE

I believe that my final product suits it’s purpose and appeals to it’s audience. I made sure to stick to the design ideas and imagery which would appeal to the audience and made sure that the script was edited when appropriate to reach the audience.

Conclusion

If I could redo my FMP and change anything, I would probably just make sure that I was more confident about my idea and myself, and make sure than I knew I would be able to do it. Although I’m not 100% happy with how all the illustrations look, I don’t think I would have changed anything in the circumstances that we had. If we had a longer time scale, I would have redone some of the illustrations so that I was happy with them. But overall, I am pleased with how my FMP looks and I’m happy with how my idea turned out.

#FMP

FMP UPDATE

I had originally planned to hand draw each page for my book, but when I tried to make my first page, I really struggled. I couldn’t get it to look how I wanted and I couldn’t really draw the scenery. I found that this made me feel really stressed because I didn’t think that I was going to be able to make anything of good or okay quality. At this point, I decided that I needed to change my FMP idea completely and make something more text based with a lot less illustrations.

After sticking to my ideas, I have decided to make my illustrations digitally instead of hand drawn. I’m finding this a lot easier as I don’t have to completely relying on drawing everything and making it look good as I can use vectors for the stuff i’m really struggling with.

#FMP

STORYBOARD

I made a rough storyboard just so I knew what bits of the script were going on what page and how many illustrations I would need to make for each page.

PUT PICTURE HERE

#fmp

ADAPTING THE SCRIPT

As the text in my book will all be directly from the film, I found the first part of the script online, as well as watching the film and taking notes of the scene details, and adapted it into around 30 pages of dialogue for the book.

As I knew that I wouldn't have the time to adapt the whole film and create all the pages, I chose to do roughly the first 30 minutes of the film, and ended it on a significant plot point. I cut out some of the original dialouge and reworded some of it so it would flow better. I also cut out some small scenes which was not as important so I would be able to spend time on the more important scenes.

I also wrote small sections of the story so it was clear to the audience what was happening.

HERE is the document with all the written out and adapted script/story

#fmp

TIME PLAN

WEEK 1- Complete first 10 pages of illustration of graphic novel

WEEK 2-

Complete another 10 page of illustrations.

WEEK 3-

Finish last 8 pages of illustrations, add all text to all of the pages, make cover and back cover.

#FMP

http://style.mtv.com/2013/05/10/cinema-style-the-craft/

PROPOSAL

IDEA

For my final major project, I wanted to combine both film and illustration. I will be producing a short graphic novel adapted from a successful movie. I have chosen to create this graphic novel as I feel that most people believe graphic novels means that it is about superheroes and only one genre, and I would like to introduce a new audience to the market. I have chosen to adapt The Craft for my graphic novel, as it is a very popular film since its original release, and recently, the witch theme and genre of films/TV has become more popular thanks to recent shows like American Horror Story, The Originals, Sleepy Hollow, and Salem, as well as many more.

I will create this graphic novel by adapting the script to a short comic-style story, and focusing only on the important scenes. The movie will be adapted to about 40 pages worth of illustrations and text, and each page will be equivalent to a minute in the film. This means that the script for the film will have to be roughly halved in length.

The unique selling point of my product is the genre of the graphic novel and the audience it appeals to. There haven’t been any graphic novels about witches or in the horror/ thriller genre recently that appeals to a young adult and teenage audience so I believe that this would be a popular product.

The target audience I plan on reaching with this product would be teenagers and young adults, aged 16-25. My product will be aimed at both boys and girls, as although the graphic novel audience is typically male, I am hoping to expand the audience with this product, especially as the movie is target more towards girls. As I would like my book to be in the horror/thriller genre, it would be aimed at teenagers rather than younger children. I found while researching that there aren’t really any graphic novels about witches that are for older people, and most only appeal to younger children. This means that my product would be unique and would attract new readers to graphic novels. The age rating for the movie is a 15, so as the film appeals to a teenage audience, the graphic novel will most likely appeal to the same.

INSPIRATION

For inspiration for this project, I have researched a variety of different graphic novels that already exist in order to see what sort of style is popular within the target audience for graphic novels. I have researched artists and illustrators who work mainly on graphic novels to help me to find an individual artistic style that I could use in my novel. I hope to draw a lot of inspiration for my illustrations for the novel from Jill Thompson and Nicolas Rix. I really like their artistic styles, and I hope to be able to use the same sort of style as Jill Thompson as she hand draws and colors her illustrations rather than doing it digitally.

I got the inspiration for the complete concept of this idea from making my EPK on a previous project. I focused on rebranding a cult film, and by doing so, I found out that there was a huge target audiences for cult films. This is why I chose to use The Craft as my graphic novel idea, as this film has a dedicated audience and is still relevant in current pop culture.

CONTEXT

My project will be in a printed book format. I plan on printing A5 hardback books in mainly black and white, with some use of colour. I wanted to keep the book in black and white as I feel like it follows the comic book/ graphic novel traditional theme, although I still want to use some color to highlight key points within the story and make it more appealing and fun to the audience.

INTENDED TECHNIQUES

To make my product, I will be hand illustrating the book and creating all the imagery in pencil on paper, and then scanning it into Photoshop and editing it so it will look the best it can. I plan on colouring it by hand also, and I would like to try using watercolours. The items I will need to produce this product are quite simple, and all I will need is an A5 sketchpad/paper, pencil, watercolour, a scanner, and photoshop.

HOW REALISTIC IS YOUR IDEA?

The finances needed to produce this product are quite low as I will only be printing 10 copies of the book, and mostly in black and white, which means that the printing costs will only reach the £60 to £70 mark. If I needed to, I could also reduce this cost by printing paperback books instead of hardback, and printing completely in black and white. This will reduce the cost by quite a lot, and will only cost around £40 to £50. The materials needed to produce the book will only cost about £10 so all in all, the prices for everything combined are quite realistic and affordable.

I believe that I will have enough time to produce my graphic novel as long as I aim to produce around 2 pages a day for everyday of the week. Creating a page will be quite time consuming so I am a bit concerned about getting everything created on time, but If I face the problem of not getting time to finish it to the standard I would like, I can always change the illustrations to only black and white, so I will save a lot of time by not needing to colour the illustrations.

DO YOU LIKE YOUR IDEA?

I really like my idea and I think I will really enjoy making it. I am a big fan of the film I am adapting into the novel, and I also enjoy illustrating. I think that the combination of two things I like in my project will keep me motivated and inspired to work hard and create a good product.

FINAL FORMAT

The final format for my product will be a portrait A5 hardback book. It will be 36 pages in black and white with some use of colour on certain pages. The pages will be white, matte and 170 g/m2. The text throughout the book will be handwritten as all the pages will be completely hand illustrated, except from on the front cover and back cover.

#FMP

My Proposal

For my final major project, I wanted to combine both film and illustration. I will be producing a short graphic novel adapted from a successful cult movie.

Cult films have a dedicated and large following which makes a good target audience as it is an already well established market. I am going to focus into the horror side of cult audiences and film. I believe that this will bring something unique to the graphic novel market, and introduce a new audience to graphic novels as I am straying away from the typical super hero plot. Most people presume that graphic novels all have to have some sort of superhero or action theme, and I wanted to remind people that there are many different genres that are covered, and introduce horror fans to the market.

I chose to adapt The Craft for my graphic novel, as it is a very popular film within The movie will be adapted to about 40 pages worth of illustrations and text, and each page will be equivalent to a minute in the film. This means that the script for the film will have to be roughly halved in length.

Cult followings of films are more likely to invest in products relevant to the film as they’re a very dedicated audience. I believe that my product will be successful in it’s market as it is a unique product and will attract a group of new fans into graphic novels.

Target Audience

However, graphic novels are targeted to a much wider audience. Graphic novels and comic books have long been associated with teenage boys because of their focus of the Superhero genre. In an environment where reading is not considered "cool", boys have found a way to legitimize reading by choosing graphic novels as reading material. Other targeted audiences have been the very young and second language readers of all ages because of the ease of comprehension which is a feature of visually based documents. But age appropriateness is not guaranteed in this literary style. "...exemplary graphic novels of the past 30 years have dealt with such mature topics as date rape, teen pregnancy, the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina, genocide, and gang violence, as well as all of the major issues that adolescents face: coming of age, identity formation, friendship, and change. Even superhero comics have explored such weighty issues as drug addiction, mental illness, HIV infection, and land mine safety." (Carter, 2009)

(x)

#FMP

Children’s Books!

As one of my ideas is to remake my children's book, I researched some children's books that are successful.

http://www.booktrust.org.uk/books/children/booklists/241/

How to write a children’s book.

So, what do I do first?

Do you have an idea for your book? Great! Now put that idea aside, because you’re not ready to start writing yet.

Every great author, from Homer to Shakespeare to Dr. Seuss, was a reader first. And that’s exactly how you will begin. So head to the library or bookstore (print book or electronic, it doesn’t matter), and find some popular books in the age group for which you want to write.

Make sure the books you’re reading have been published within the last 25 years. Classics have their own value, but for this exercise you need to understand how children’s books are being written today.

Choose the books that speak to you for any number of reasons. Maybe you like the title and cover art. Perhaps the jacket copy is intriguing. Or maybe you were convinced by a review. As you become more familiar with current children’s books, you’ll find yourself drawn to the same age group, genre and tone of story over and over. Whatever you love to read will probably be what you also love to write. So collect a pile and start reading.

Read each book through once to simply experience it. Note how you feel after you’re done. Was the story generally satisfying? Did you think about the characters long after you finished the book? Did it spark your imagination in any way? Above all, did this book make you feel the way you want readers to feel after reading your future work? Any books that get a “yes” go in a pile to be read again. (x)

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mallorymcinnis/books-to-read-with-kids-in-2015#.wiGOAAqZG

How to Illustrate a children’s book by Jane Massey

I looked for the first steps to creating a professional standard children’s book and found a list created by Jane Massey, who is an illustrator.

“I studied Graphic Design at Kingston University and then worked for several design agencies in London and Hong Kong before concentrating on illustration.I have illustrated children's books for Random House, Puffin Books, Campbell Books, Scholastic, Penguin, Lion Publishing, Little Tiger Press, Bloomsbury, Michael O'Mara, Ladybird, Caterpillar Books and Helen Exley Gift Books.” (x)

1. Sketch character ideas

2. Prepare a colour sample

3. Understanding the brief

4. Make thumbnail sketches

5. Refine your characters

6. Consider your audience

7. Discuss Feedback

8. Check for continuity

9. Prepare the final traces

10. Build up colour

11. Leave yourself time

12. Add finishing touches

These websites were helpful for me as I have never properly written a children’s book, except for when we did the children's book project, although I don’t think it was to a very good or professional standard. This has helped me to understand what goes into producing a professional standard book, as I have learned tips from experienced illustrators who have had their work published.

#FMP

I originally planned on adapting a movie into a graphic novel, although I don’t know if Im going to be able to do this anymore as using the story idea/characters etc will mean that I am infringing on copyright. This means that if I am unable to adapt a film, I will create a graphic novel with my own plot and characters.

#FMP

As I plan on adapting a film to a graphic novel, I found some posters from films that have been adapted into a different art style. These are helpful as it shows the different kind of styles I could use in my graphic novel but still keep the illustrations similar to the film and recognisable. (x)

#FMP

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