Graphic Narrative Evaluation

Use this template to help you evaluate your project.

You should give specific details about your work.

You should provide both written and visual examples to explain your project.

You should find areas to praise in your work. Be specific about why you think they are good or why you are proud of them.

You should also find areas that could be improved. Look for areas that you could make better if you went back to them. Be specific about what you would improve.

Add additional slides as you need to. Don’t be restricted by what is here.

Any blank slides should be deleted before submission.

Does your final product reflect your original intentions?

• Compare your planning/digital flat plans/ storyboards to your final product

• Yes, my final product does reflect and meet my original intentions. After going through my plans and story boards etc, I have closely evaluated it and of course, extracted everything required for my final product to be successful. My final product follows the storyboard I made for what I wanted my story to be. The flat plans contributed greatly as I could also visualise other aspects for my story. The plans gave everything shape as I knew what kind of things I could implement within the story.

How well have you constructed your images?

• How well have you constructed your images? You could talk about the overall visual appearance and well as the use of texture and colour.

• I believe I've constructed my images well, I managed to avoid copyright issues etc as I used the shapes method for my storyboard, so all the ideas of the body were not taken from anything. This made it easier and more beneficial. However, I do believe I I could’ve made the character shapes more neater and taken more time to get the perfect size for arms and legs and make it continuous throughout the story.

How well have you used text to anchor your images

• You should talk about the combination of words, images and text.

• . I have managed to match up my font style to the for of location of which the story originated from. This style of font is in the serif category and fits in well with story. This is an oriental kind of eastern style font. The words used are simple and the actions given correspond with what is being shown.

Is your product suitable for your audience?

• Reference your proposal• Give an audience profile and describe suitability in reference to

content• Yes, I do believe my product to be suitable for my audience. I have

kept it simple, text base simple. I have no encouraged any form of violence, though it had been notified and highlighted. My main target audience was for older children around the ages of 9-10, mainly based towards the male gender, however it is still able to be read by females too. It’s wide spread across the world and not going to be placed in just a specific country, though this is a Japanese story so it may have some effect to the Asian lands. It has no form of foul language, no form of cursing, no form of disrespect or discrimination to anyone.

What do you like/dislike about the techniques you have used?

• Reference specific tools you used with images• What I liked about using the shapes technique was that it was

simplistic, as this is for a children’s book. It also allows them to get familiar with certain shapes too, as well as it just being the storybook. It gives an educational side too. It also promotes good deeds throughout and gives a positive outlook to the right paths as it’s good to be nice. The things that I dislike about the technique I’ve used is, even though it seems so simplistic for shapes in a story book, it was hard to maintain the correct sizes and shapes for select body parts and keep it continuous throughout the story. Using tools such as the shape tool to form buildings was easy and good, as was triangles and ellipse tools. When it got to warping certain shapes it became tedious and fairly annoying.

What do you like/dislike about how your final product looks?

• I dislike how some of the body parts are a bit wonky, such as the arms and legs.

• I do like my use of textures/filter galleries to create certain effects so everything Isn’t too plain.

Why did you include the content you used?

• Images, fonts, effects, colours• I looked at other children’s books for gender roles for colour

ideas for my content. Typically, as a more masculine type effect of colour used was darker, dirty colours to convey certain thoughts across and have influences. The fonts I looked at for childrens books were sometimes simple, sometimes fun and sometimes both. With my idea of it being an Asian folklore it decided to go with a simple but fun kind of font to go with my story. The images that influenced me were that of old Japanese stories and and looking up about the samurai and their farming culture etc. These allowed me to include certain things into my content to enhance the ideas for what’s in my story.

Male character Female character

What signs, symbols or codes have your used in your work?

• Choices of colour, style, locations, character design and tone all give additional meaning to your work.

• I followed the traditional way of colour code as you would typically find in any children’s storybook. This would be the way to typically group the male a female genders. This was achieved by giving males more dirty, dark, bland colours, whereas the female characters generally have light, soft tone, cleaner colours. . I have managed to match up my font style to the for of location of which the story originated from. This style of font is in the serif category and fits in well with story. This is an oriental kind of eastern style font.

What representations can be found in your work?

• How are men, women or children shown in your work? Does your work feature different ages, races, social groups or religions? Does a lack of any variety of character types create its own representation?

• My work does represent different ages and gender. A notable way of seeing this is that for males, their body is upside down whereas the females are the rightway up. Age is shown from the hair colour. If it’s grey/white, they are of an older age. This is a cultural aspect as in most fairytales etc, elders are presented this way. However, my work doesn’t present social groups or even religions. You would be able to tell if there was a child etc, as they would be shorter than the normal characters.

An elderly woman

Young boy.

The males uphold he cultural samurai feature of the hairstyle “Topknot”. In contrast to the female characters, they don’t follow this rule. We can also tell from the body difference to see the difference of the male and female, the age is shown as the elderly woman has grey hair, a typical thing to be represented when talking/showing anything regarding an older person.

What style have you employed in your products?

• Discuss influences/ existing products• What visual style does your work have and why did you choose it? • The visual styles I have implemented in my story book allows easy

detection of male and female characters. I have a distinctive form of style in my storybook, as the architectural basis of the village etc is that of Asian culture. This is highly noticeable as most European architecture isn’t anything like this. This doesn’t follow the cultural type of storylines and telling, but a lot of the things incorporated inside are. Influences of this form of style compared to existing products was the actual art of Asian intellect and art and architecture. I have managed to match up my font style to the for of location of which the story originated from. This style of font is in the serif category and fits in well with story. This is an oriental kind of eastern style font.

What were the strengths and weaknesses of the pre-production and planning

Planning and research helped me a lot as I was able to gather information on certain aspects that would be included and contribute to my work in the future, giving me multiple choices as to what would work etc. I believe my time was managed out evenly so that I was able to collect some images that I needed, then I was able to read up more on the original story, it then enabled me to collaborate ideas into sectors for me to choose which was the best idea.

Historical and cultural context

• How does your work compare to what has come before? What other similar products have existed in the past? What current products exist?

Younger children’s books have used styles which I have used and that’s where I have got my inspiration from. For example “Song of the trees” Though mine isn’t so good, it follows the same concept and principle.