OUIL601 - Summative evaluation

Overall I'm quite happy with the final outcome of both the essay and the practical, and the skills that I have gained throughout this module. Even though I had a bit of a unsure start with trying to decide on my essay question, I quickly got into the flow of researching the relevant topics and found that this also helped me to quickly develop the practical elements of my project. After doing research into illustrated educational material and different genres of children's literature, I decided that the most suitable practical solution would be to create a children's story/activity book, as it would allow me to create a narrative that could intertwine education and an engaging story. I intended to create illustrated merchandise, from one of the characters in my book, but I underestimated the amount of time it would take me to actually finish the story to a high enough standard, so this may be something that I come back to in the future, although I didn't get chance to create merchandise or a puzzle book, I feel like my story works very well as a stand alone piece. My research into anthropomorphism taught me that having animals in stories can help children to understand difficult topics and get them to identify with a character. This was one of the reasons I decided to change the main character of my book from a child to an animal, it would fit better with a more simple narrative, and would help me convey the educational element of the narrative better. Because of time constraints I decided that I would use a limited colour scheme and only one medium, that I would finish off digitally, as my initial final images were taking far too much time, and would have ended up being a detriment to the overall quality of the book.

OUIL601 - Final book

I was able to get my book printed and bound with quite a lot of time to spare, I was really pleased with the overall look of the finished product, I think the images worked really well when in context and placed next to each other. However the cover got slightly damaged because of the type of paper it was printed on, so has slight marks on the front, which doesn't look too bad, just adds a bit of texture to it. 

The front and back covers are just bold shapes layered on top of each other, using the colour palette from the book, to create a simple texture. 

OUIL601 - Final images PDF

Here is the PDF of my final book. I'm really happy with it, although it took way too long, and I think I made it a bit too long, but there overall quality of the images was good, I was pleased with the way they looked with the combination of watercolour and digital enhancement. I think if I were to do this again I would probably make the story a bit shorter, and maybe only use watercolour to create texture rather than using it to do the detail as well. I think the book is synthesised well with my dissertation and successfully illustrates the points of my essay, that illustration can be used to inspire an interest in wildlife conservation in young children.

OUIL601 - Merchandise mock ups

At the beginning of my project I wanted to create a range of merch to go alongside my book, however I ended up using all of my time to finish my book. I originally wanted to create a puzzle book to go with the book, and then a range of stationary. I would have created a campaign and maybe a reward system, that would reward the children for completing the puzzles.

I thought of 'I'm a snail friend' as a type of campaign thing, the design could be printed onto things like t-shirts and pencil cases and be given as a reward for completing different challenges/puzzles.

Although I didn't get to actually make this properly during this module, I may take the idea over into OUIL603 and do a range of products based on a children's character that I have created.

OUIL601 - Project boards

here are the project boards I created for the final crit

OUIL601 - Project synthesis

The title of my essay was 'How can illustration be used to inspire an interest in wildlife conservation in young children' I chose this title, because I became increasingly interested in how illustration can be used to educate future generations on important topics, off the back of the big success of my practical project during level 5. For the practical side of the module I decided to create a story book, which followed a snail travelling around his back garden, giving out gifts to disadvantaged wildlife, while learning about their plight and what can be done to help them. From my research into existing educational illustrations for children, and children's literature, I decided that doing my book in a half book half comic style format was best for incorporating all of my research into the narrative. I discovered through my research that it is said that anthropomorphised animals can possibly hinder a chid's learning, because they begin to develop a skewed view of the real world, but I chose to to have partially anthropomorphised animals in my book because I think that the age my book is targeted at would be able to differentiate between reality and fiction, and would still have the benefits of using animals in narrative, by posing the tough subject of wildlife conservation in a lighter way that is easier for children to understand.

OUIL601 - What I would have done if I had the time

So I really wanted to create a range of illustrated merch using the snail character I created, however with how long everything took to complete, there was absolutely no chance of doing that.

I feel like it could work well to take my character onto different platforms, like an app, that would provide activites, a bit like The Wild Time app, but more focused on education. That way I could create a wider range of merchandise that relates to the app as well as the book.

The Gruffalo is a good example of how a children's book can be turned into a lot of different types of merchandise.

I'd want to create a range of illustrated stationary, that would also provide educational information and maybe go with an activity book or colouring book. 

OUIL601 - Laurent Moreau

I proper love Laurent Moreau's work, it's quite different from the other artist's I found, a lot brighter and more abstract, but I like that he creates weird looking shapes with bright block colours, I think this would work quite well in a children's book, to make the narrative more interesting.

OUIL601 - Christopher Silas Neal

OUIL601 - Brigette Barrager

I found Brigette Barrager on Pinterest, as always, and I much prefer this sort of colour scheme. I really like the mixture of pinks, blues and purples. These images are much less detailed than Wild and The Little Gardener by Emily Hughes.

OUIL601 - Emily Hughes

I knew of Emily Hughes a while ago but forgot she existed. I found her again recently on Pinterest when I was looking for ideas for my practical. 

She has two naturey themed books, 'Wild' and 'The Little Gardener'

The colour schemes of the book aren't what I'm thinking of using, but the colour palette is similar in that it's quite limited, which I think works quite well, coupled with the detailed patterns, I think it looks right nice.