Phase 1
The birth of my mentorship project begins. I knew I wanted to do a children’s book because I was always drawn to them as a kid and really appreciated good stories but the visuals are what I cared about. There was a topic that kept wandering in my brain and something that I faced as a child and still do today. Parents arguing in front of their children. This always tormented me and always made me very upset and would make me want to hide and run away. Now looking back it wasn’t so bad but I still will always avoid it if I can.
This is a problem that many children face after I researched it and it can cause a lot of stress on children while growing up. I wanted to bring this topic through a story that children could read and for parents to understand how a child must feel. My character will go on a quest to find out what love is and they will come to realize that love comes in many shapes and forms and can be experienced in different ways not just through loving someone or thing. The fact is love isn’t always and perfect and there will be ups and downs and sometimes it won’t work out but there are other ways to experience and find love.
This first mood board is an example of how I want the illustration style to look and feel. I want it to be fun, playful, and cartoon-like.
This next mood board example is some book covers I really like because there is some lovely white space.
This mood board example shows how I want the environment to look and feel. I also am really drawn to the colors because they feel very fantasy-like. I knew I wanted to include mountains, forest, ocean, and sky.
self-assessment: 10/10 I had a clear vision and presented many mood boards to my mentor and he had a clear understanding of my direction.
Phase 2
For this part, I was mainly working on the characters and rough storyboarding. My mentor told me that I did a good job by keeping them very loose and he still understood what was happening. I began thinking about the environment and what I wanted this fantasy world to look like. I knew the colors would be bright and the forest and creatures would all be very whimsical.
I numbered my storyboards to make it easier for my mentor to understand and I attached a description of what would happen in each frame. Next time I could do this differently and write little captions of each frame or write literally what the characters say. To make sure there isn’t any confusion from what you are seeing to that is being and said.
My next homework was working on the story and making that come to life more. I wanted the narrative to be like a sing-along in some parts. I was really working on the song part and the rhyming. Ideally, hopefully, I could make the whole story rhyme.
Self-assessment: 8/10 could have used further character exploration and storyboard clarity.
Phase 3
I am condensing two weeks together because we only have five posts when there were six in total. I began by working on fleshing out the story more and working with Patrick and refining the target audience. The story part is definitely the hardest part for me because writing isn’t my strong suit or putting thoughts down and visuals, of course, come easier. I refined the story more however still needs work and then I was working on character development. Figuring out the characters was a bit tricky because I wanted them to not have a gender and just be neutral and not necessarily have a specific race either. I tried creating the, into animals and they were looking pretty cute.
After talking to some different people I found out that children tend to associate themselves more with humans and connect more with the character than animals. After finding this out I decided to go back to the original plan and go with a human and a magical creature. I decided that it’s okay to pick a gender and race for this book and maybe mix it up the next time. So my main character is a little girl with red hair and a magical hummingbird.
After I knew this is what I was going with I began brainstorming poster book ad designs in sketch form and have a design mood board.
Self-Assessment: 10/10 I had a lot of process work and ideation that went into this phase. I developed the story several times and I went deeper into character exploration and developed several layout concepts.
Phase 4
This week I worked on creating designs for the poster book ad. I wanted to go with something that was modern and trendy with an unconventional typography layout. With the illustration inside of a colored square. I went through many variations, but I felt confident about this one. I sent the sketches and design/layout inspiration to my mentor, and he got back to me and said that I was maybe heading down the wrong path for the wrong target market. I was designing based on what is cool now and what I would think is cool when in fact, my target audience is for parents and young children. We discussed and deliberated on what designs might work better, and my mentor found a concept that I already made that he thought there was potential.
So I switched directions and I am glad he caught me and helped me go down a different path. So I decided to have my little characters very small walking on a trail and tall trees towering over them. Looking like an enchanted forest. This illustration now would show more depth and contrast in size. I also found what typography I wanted to use and I am going with a very playful retro happy typeface. I ended up making my poster design three columns with most of the text running down the middle. I also had to work on the color palette and develop that further to have lots of references. The color palette I am going with is a postal sci fie color palette because I find it very pleasing to the eye and most children do enjoy some bright color when reading storybooks. This book will be bursting in color. The only thing I’m missing is the sparkles.
Self-Assessment: 7/10 I believe this was the hardest timeframe I set myself and I was not able to complete as much work as I hoped for my milestone. I was hoping to have both designs and final stages ready for revising but I only had one which is shown the beginning of phase 5.
Phase 5
This was the final stage for me to take my concepts and vision into the development stage. I had spoken to my mentor about deliverables and we confirmed that there would be a double-page spread and a book poster ad. Both the poster book ad will help advertise the book on social media and could be put up in public. As well the actual book dimensions are the correct size for Instagram, so I can post more images of the book.
I think the week between final ideation to the finished pieces was a tight timeline I gave myself and I slightly adjusted timeline when I found out we had an additional week. It was really helpful having the milestones for myself though because it motivated and pushed me to complete the new task.
A lot of my work was ideation based and writing for the story. The story will continue to be modified and edited. I feel pretty happy with all the images I created for the spreads and I can visualize the end result, all I need to do is keep revising the writing.
The development of the poster book ad took the longest to ideate because I wasn’t sure how I wanted it to look. I decided I wanted the poster ad to be the same design as the cover for the book. However, I have to redraw the correct dimensions.
My mentor brought up some cool ideas I could incorporate into the book or have additional features. For example, I am including an online QR-Code that people can access b/w coloring sheets as well there will be a few pages that the child can color in the book itself. The book will also come with a page of stickers.
I realized two things I need to make sure a fix and change are that when I was coloring my artwork in photoshop I was working in RGB which was fine for a digital PDF but when I take this to the final printing stages I need to work in CMYK so I must change that. I also need to check whether I can use the typeface I selected because I did buy it online but not to use on things that I am potentially selling so I need to make sure I buy the one I can use for selling.
I plan on continuing to complete this children’s book this summer and finish the story, cover, and all the spreads. This story is dear to me and I would love for others to read it. I would like to print these books and sell them at markets, and small boutiques. I will keep in touch with my mentor through this process and keep in touch with Patrick for story revisions. This was a great experience and I am so glad I got to work with Carson Ting on this project that I have wanted to do for a while now. Overall, it was a great experience working with someone in the field to help direct and throw around ideas with.
Self-Assessment: 10/10 I revised my work and asked my mentor and a few classmates for feedback on what I could improve on. I caught up where I wanted to be and my mentor was very happy with the final results and progress. I finished what I set out to do.