New Idea

I was trying to think of different ways in which to make my book different. I want something to interest the child on a higher scale.

The idea came to me to look into buying a recordable box. I would firstly use a zoom mic to record someone reading the full story of Gonzo the Guard dog in a suitable voice for the ears of children. I would then edit and adjust the audio suitably by importing it to reaper and then importing it onto the recordable box.

I’ve been researching some different types of recordable boxes and came across this one on a website called “Invite by Voice”. I have attached some pictures below.

 

The next step would to then develop a toy that I hope will read the story to the child. Whether this be Gonzo or Ruby, I hope to make a toy that represents them and to implant the recording device inside the teddy.

I think this would be a lovely addition to the book. It would give a little something extra and would really bring the character to life.

 

Book sizes

I have decided since I first came up with my idea for FYP that my book will not be paperback. I feel that a board book is so much more visually appealing and can help with the general wear and tear that children’s book must face.

After coming across a book in the library called ‘Norman the Slug with a Silly Shell’, I immediately loved both the size and shape of the book. I hope to make my book in a similar size. The pages will be square, as displayed in my prototype, and I hope for the dimensions to be approximately 10.2 x 0.2 x 10.2 inches. I have attached a photograph of the book below.

Future technical and creative approaches to project (Phase 2)

• Creatively, I aim to sketch more. I recently purchased a small sketch pad in which I will carry around with my on a regular basis in order to capture any ideas that come into my head as they come to me, weather it be ideas on character designs, my storyline, visual styles etc..

• One main thing that I am aware of is that I need to put a lot of more work into my backgrounds. I left myself a little short on time in this department and think that my prototype may have fallen down due to it. I plan on creating much more visual appealing backgrounds for my story wand put a lot more work and creative thought into the design of this particular section.

• I also want to learn some new styles that I have been recently researching in regards to my backgrounds. I have a paint style in mind that I know can be completed on Adobe Photoshop that I am really interested in learning. I hope to use both Illustrator and Photoshop combined in future months to create better-put together imagery for the book.

• I also aim to continue illustrating on a much more regular basis on things that may not even be used in the book, purely to improve my skills on the software. Illustration and graphics are the main aspects of my project and I need to really focus and improve on both of these.

My final prototype

 

This image above is my completed prototype. I feel that I have put a lot of work into the development of this. I enjoyed a lot of parts of it as illustration is a strong passion of mine. I also constructively learned things in the process.

It took me all of my time and efforts to develop this piece, and I feel that I really gave it my all. However, I know now that time management is an aspect I really fell down on. I spent several weeks on Adobe Illustrator developing characters and then left myself short of time to develop other variations of the characters as well as my backgrounds.

However, I am confident this is something I will improve on in Phase 2. I need to allocate my time better and not put everything into one aspect and learn how to distribute the workload more efficiently.

I am happy with how the prototype looks. I really like the illustration style that I have settled on, and really like how the pencil stroke font choice fits in with it. Now that I am comfortable with my illustration choice, I can continue to design the rest of the book.

Key lessons learned from prototype

• Through my completion of this prototype, I found I learned a lot, both good and bad.
• I found an illustration style over the last while that I think really suits me and that I enjoy doing. I also learned a lot about font styles and what considerations to make when choosing a font aimed for children’s eyes. I also reminded myself how much I love illustrating and how I am excited to complete this project to a high standard.
• One main constructive thing that I’ve learned is that my time management needs improving. I know now that sometimes when it comes to illustrating, things can take longer than anticipated. This was similar in the story writing section. I feel that I will need to organise my time better in the upcoming months if I want to finish my project to the standard I hope for.
• I learned that some changes need to be made to my designs. I really like the Gonzo that I have created for the prototype, but this does not mean anything is set in stone. I am always thinking of different ways to improve him and change him before I decide on anything too final.

 

User Testing Results

All in all, I was satisfied with my results. I got good help from my aunties and uncles who showed the prototype to my cousins and got their feedback. I was happy to hear that it appealed to both my male and female cousins. This confirmed for me that it was not gender orientated. They explained that the children liked the characters in the prototype as well.

My sister informed me that the children in her class loved Gonzo’s character. It helped that she had read the story to them before and they were simply able to put a face to the name. They thought he was a funny looking dog and found humour in him. All in all she explained that the feedback from her class was positive.

A couple of my family members informed me of some small changes they would make to Gonzo, such as his shape and minor details. I have taken this on board.

In regards to the survey, everything answered was all positive feedback to me. Question 1, which asked was the prototype engaging got an excellent result of 95%.

Question 2, which was concerned with whether or not people felt the prototype was gender orientated was also successful as 90% of people said yes.

Question 3, which discussed the age group that people deemed appropriate stated that 75% of people said in the ages 3-7.

Lastly, I asked people the optional question of ‘What changes would you make to the prototype?’ This was interesting as only 4 out of 20 people actually answered the questions and two of the comments were ‘none’, one person stated they would ‘add more colour’ and another said they ‘Wouldn’t make any changes’!

 

Approach to Prototype Testing

There was one main approach that stuck out for me in regards to testing the prototype. This was to make it seen to as much children in my target audience as I possibly could. I contacted a lot of my young family that I tested the story on initially as well as asking my sister to show the class she teaches in her school. I asked my friends who have young siblings and family members to show the prototype to them. I ultimately wanted to discover if the children were interested in the character of Gonzo, if they thought the pages were visually appealing and whether or not they would like to see more of it.

The book is for children, however, I feel that an adults input is also extremely valid for gathering solid feedback and constructive criticism. I put the prototype to a lot of my friends and my family members also by developing a small survey on Survey Monkey. I sent the link to the survey along with my prototype to approx. 25 of my friends/family. Altogether 20 people completed the survey, which I was very happy with. I will discuss the feedback from the survey in the following section.

 

Backgrounds

I really enjoyed experimenting with what I had done with regards to backgrounds. I brainstormed some different ideas on what I initially wanted to be the backdrop to the prototype. I had some different design styles in mind and developed them further. 

After producing some sketches, I then scanned them onto my computer and used them as a guide for illustrating. I also used my graphic pen for designing this, as it helps a lot with the smaller details.

I left myself a little short on time in regards to backgrounds, so what I have come up with will most likely not be the background used for that page, but I still like the flow of it and hope to come up with a similar background, with some additional adjustments.

Typography

I began firstly by researching fonts and font styles that occupy popular children’s books. I went to libraries for research on this and done a lot of online research for it also. There is a lot of websites made available to people today which offer some wonderful and free fonts. After I researched, it really came down to narrowing down the styles I want.

I gathered the very helpful knowledge that most children learn to read by going letter by letter until they are able to make sense of an entire word. Therefore, it is important to choose a typeface with well-defined contours and generous space between letters, which gives them a safe and inviting feeling.

I proceeded then to download each of the fonts to my laptop and assemble them on a document using Adobe Illustrator. I found it more ideal to see them together first to make comparisons.

I then narrowed down the ones I liked after inputting them into my prototype and selecting four possible fonts.

 

Ruby Robin

Although Ruby is not going to be in my prototype, I wanted to begin developing her character as she is of high importance in the book. I started with rough sketching, I showed a couple to my cousin and she didn’t take too well to them, so I decided to take the same approach to the way I drew Gonzo and let my mind run freely.

This resulted in the image of Ruby here below. Ruby will beside Gonzo be extremely small. I drew her face as cute as I could. Like Gonzo, this design isn’t my final decision and plan on making some good changes to her in phase 2 and finalising the design. However, I am confident that I am on to something with this design. I feel that it represents well the Ruby I’ve imagined in my head.

Again, I have put a lot of time into developing this design on Illustrator.