Finalising my Portfolio

This morning I have finalised which pieces of work will be going in my portfolio, in which order and what sizes they will be.

Here's a little plan I put together of how the pages will be laid out:

The majority of the work in my portfolio is from the current project as its the stuff I am most pleased with. However I have tried to use a variety of the work from that project such as full double-pages spreads, character designs, a close-up scene, a piece of typography etc. so thats its not repetitive.

I've also used my best pieces of work from the Negotiated study project earlier this year, and the sequential narrative project in year 2, as well as some book cover designs and animal sketches produced as personal work. 

I have a total of 17 images for my portfolio at the moment, which is a few less than the optimum 20, but I hope to have new work to add in over the next couple of months.

Explaining the storylines

Seeing as I am unable to share a full sized version of the images on here, I thought I would summarise some of what happens in the book and how the characters interact with each other, as its quite difficult to see it all in the small versions of the images.

(I've included screen shots of the parts of the book I am talking about but bare in mind these are much lower quality than the final images are)

- The bird in the foreground on page 1 is later revealed to be the fairy godmother, who helps out Cinderella in getting a new dress and a carriage for the ball. The bird is back in the foreground again on the penultimate page. In both cases this character is meant to be looking over the rest of the characters, acting as the fairy god mother for the whole of the fairytale world as opposed to just Cinderella. 

- The green and the blue birds are the ones that find sleeping beauty after she pricks her finger and falls asleep. And they later go and find the prince to get help.

- The prince that awakens Sleeping Beauty is the one that is holding a bow and arrow on page 1. During the first few pages he is shooting arrows at a tree, and one of the arrows lands in a heart shaped marked in the tree bark, meant to symbolise cupid and a theme of romance.

- The pink bird helps out several of the characters throughout the book. Near the beginning she delivers an envelope to the evil step sisters, an invitation to something, but when they leave the castle they end up getting lost in the trees, leaving Cinderella free to meet the fairy godmother.

She also finds a key which she uses to unlock Hansel & Gretel from the gingerbread house.

- Hansel & Gretel start the story walking hand in hand through the woods, and Hansel leaves a trail of bread crumbs behind them. Meanwhile the Witch is watching them from behind trees etc. and she lays out a different trail of breadcrumbs, causing them to go the wrong way and stumble across the gingerbread house. They then are tempted into eating the house, and get caught by the witch and locked inside. After the bird frees them, Hansel & Gretel run away and are further helped out by a swan who takes them to the ball. Meanwhile the witch returns to the house and finds the bird sat in front of the empty cage, and is then attacked by the wolf who has run from Red Riding Hood's cottage.

- In total there are 5 birds that all help out various characters throughout the book. This is because birds a re a recurring theme in most fairytales, and are meant to represent salvation, freedom and spirit.

- Red Riding Hood is being watched by the wolf in the first page of the book, and later talks to him in front of the castle. Upon learning where she is going the wolf goes ahead to the Grandmother's cottage and waits inside (I have omitted the part of the story where he kills the grandmother). When she arrives at the house we can see the wolf through the window, and soon after she walks in he attacks.

- Early on in the book Red Riding Hood drops some apples on the ground whilst she is walking. Hansel later picks one of these up, as does the Queen.

- The woodsman (the character with the head of a bear and carrying an axe) spends the majority of the book wondering through the fairytale world and cutting down trees. On page 4 he is watching Red Riding Hood (this is supposed to be a case of "love at first sight"), and later he hears the wolf attacks and runs to rescue her.

- Another case of "love at first sight" is on the first page of the book where Prince charming spots Snow White for the first time. He then spends most of the rest of the book going to pick a flower for her and searching around the land for her, until one of the dwarves finds him to ask for his help. When he arrives at the dwarves house he finds that the woman in need of his help is in fact Snow White, and he awakens her and gives her the flower.

- On the first page, the Queen is looking into the magic mirror and sees a reflection of Snow White ("mirror mirror on the wall"). She then picks up the apple that Red Riding Hood has dropped, poisons it and heads to the dwarves house where she gives it to Snow White.

At the end of the book when she returns to the castle she looks in the mirror and to her annoyance sees a reflection of both Snow White and Prince Charming together.

- Snow White begins the story happily wondering through the land (meanwhile the Queen is plotting her death), before she meets the seven dwarves. They take her in and she helps them to work on the cottage (she is gardening as the Queen approaches). After she has been poisoned by the Queen the dwarves then help her, placing her on a bed and seeking help from the Prince.

- The dwarves all begin the story spread across the page, and come together as they meet Snow White.

One of the dwarves is a little shy, and is always hiding behind a hedge or a building, until the end when Snow White is rescued and he celebrates with the others.

Another dwarf is carrying a basket of flowers which she later puts in a vase in their house.

A third dwarf is a little mischievous and at one point climbs up the house and sits on the roof where he talks to a butterfly.

Another dwarf is the one that spots Snow eating the apple and runs to fetch help from the Prince.

All of the dwarves interact with each other and take part in various activities such as cleaning the windows of their house.

- Rapunzel's story is the least connected to the rest as it all takes place in the tower. The characters follow the story of the Prince seeing the enchantress climb up Rapunzel's hair and later calling up to her and doing the same. The enchantress sees this, climbs up and pushes them out from the tower.

Tehy two characters are then separated form each other until the Prince sees her long hair on the ground and follows it until he finds her. The enchantress then falls from the tower as she no longer has Rapunzel's hair to help her down.

- On each page, there are 3 butterflies for the reader to find. They are spread across the pages and often interact with some of the characters or hide in the trees.

- At the end of the book, all of the good characters come together at the palace (the building on the hill in the distance) for a ball. All of the characters are now in their respective couples, apart from the dwarves who all dance around together.

Making posters

As well as putting together all of the pages, I've also been working on creating some large illustrations to act as posters/large prints for the wall at the exhibition.

I am planning on using an image of the fairytale world, as well as one illustration for each of the six stories. However the character drawings that I have done so far are too small and not detailed enough to work as posters so I've been re-doing a couple of them.

So far I've completed the one for Hansel & Gretel and made a start on the one for Snow White. I read through my dummy book and picked out a snippet of both of the stories that I like the most. For Hansel & Gretel it was the image of them walking hand in hand, and for Snow White its the moment on page 3 where she meets the 7 dwarves:

Luckily I already had a larger version of the Hansel & Gretel image form earlier in the project when I was working on character designs. I put them in some scenery and added colour to the image and this is the result:

For Snow White I re-drew the characters at a larger scale with a little more detail in their clothing and faces. I also changed the back-drop slightly so the "shy" dwarf is peering round a tree as opposed to the edge of the castle, and they are standing in a little clearing in the woodlands.

I've not finished adding colour to this one yet but this is how it looks so far:

These are the sections of the story that I will be using for the other 4 stories:

Cinderella: meeting her Prince at the ball

Red Riding Hood: Her first encounter with the wolf

Sleeping beauty: Asleep in the tower with the 2 birds

Rapunzel: The prince climbing up her hair

I'll be working on these in between adding colour to the pages, however the pages are currently the most important as they need to be printed as soon as possible in order to bind the book. But I would hopefully like to be able to print everything in one go so am aiming to get these done by next monday when I go to the photography room to print the pages. 

Dummy Book

After completing my pages over the weekend I printed them out and created a new dummy book:

I read through the book several times (as the reader is intended to, picking one character and following their story through the book, and then starting again with another character and so on) and made notes of any changes I wanted to make.

A few of the characters needed to be made a little bigger or smaller, and some needed to be moved around slightly so that the order made more sense.

I've now made all of these changes and am ready to start adding the colour to the pages, although I may still make a couple of changes as I go as things will look quite different once colour is added.

Pages 6-11

Over the weekend I finished putting together the rest of the pages, without adding colour so it will be easier to make any necessary changes.

I'm quite pleased with how they are looking, and its great to see all the elements coming together.

As before, at the moment the pages are looking a bit repetitive, but once the colour is added and they are printed out and viewed at full size, this should be improved.

Page 6:

Page 7:

Page 8:

Page 9:

Page 10:

Page 11:

On some of the pages, certain elements are more in the foreground, to add a bit of depth to the image. For example, in page 7 Snow White and the Queen are brought into the foreground just as Snow is about to eat the apple, a key point in that story.

I'll be printing these into a dummy book to allow me to look through everything properly and make any necessary changes, and then moving on to add the colour.

Week 15 (in brief)

- Piecing together pages 6-11

- A dummy book

- Making posters
-Explaining the story lines
-Finalising my Portfolio
-Designing End Papers
- Creating an Introduction page
-Continuing the Posters

- Adding colour

Piecing things together

I've spent today continuing to put together the other pages for the book. I decided to piece the rest together before I colour anymore, as that way its easier to make any changes as I go.

So far I've done pages 2-5 (as well as 1 & 12 that I completed earlier in the week). This part of the process is pretty long as there are lots of elements to remember to include, and lots of fiddling around to get things in the right place, but so far I'm pleased with how they're all looking.

Page 2:

 Page 3:

 Page 4:

Page 5:

As with the images I've already done, these will be fully coloured and given a bit of texture. The seasons will be changing throughout the pages, with page 2 being autumn with leaves falling, page 3 with some bare trees and lots of leaves on the ground, page 4 with more bare trees and clouds in the sky, and page 5 has snow on the trees and buildings. The colours will also change to suit the weather, from browns and oranges through to white and pale blue. From page 6 onwards there will start to be touches as pink and green as it turns to spring, all the way to bright green and yellow for summer at the end of the book.

So far, I think page 5 is the most successful in terms of layout, the characters are spread all across the page and there's quite a lot happening. Page 2 is the one I am least happy with as all the characters are quite crowded into the bottom of the page, however I think this might look better once colour is added and there's more contrast between each character so they can stand out from each other.

I've tried to change around the perspective a little form page to page (as discussed earlier in the project)  but its quite difficult to fit all of the characters in, so at the moment some of the pages are looking a little repetitive. However, once the colour is added and different characters start to stand out in the foreground etc. I don't think that will be the case anymore. As well as this, the idea of book is to find certain characters etc. as you read through the images, rather than to look at each image as a whole, so that should help even further.

I've got 6 more pages to put together so I'll be working on those over the weekend and hope to start colouring early next week, in order to get them all ready to print on the following monday.