In my final
book, I used Photoshop and illustrator and mostly it was on the computer. How I
got to making my Pop-up book to do with children and the bottom of the garden is
because I have young brothers and sisters and they are where most of my ideas
come from because all younger children seem to want to get into the mud and
want to feel different insects as younger children do. So I thought I could use
the idea from them. It has been quite hard to get the ideas down as I had quite
a few. The words that are in my book, all rhyme and are sensible and simple but
the rhyme will stick in children’s head and this will help to keep the children
occupied and read the book quite a lot. The dummy book was great fun to make
and it is quite a sweet child book.
With my final book it has imagery that children seem to love
and that they seem to enjoy, when it came to knowing what I wanted I did my
dummy book at that made it better and I used illustrator and photo shop and
this seemed to make my book look a lot better and then the pop up are mainly
about the animals for example the caterpillar pops up as the log does then the
snail also does pop up and it works rather nicely with the image I was trying
to portray. Children love things that pop up especially animals as they seem to
have better feelings for animals at a young age and seem to give them a lot
more hugs and things like that I only know this due to having younger siblings
and this gives me a better chance of passing the objective because of them and
they do seem to care a lot more for animals as anything else and this is a good
thing and also that is why I did it on the bottom of the garden because most
children go down the bottom of the garden and make different things and collect
different insects and animals that live down there. Also in my final book it has many different sorts of
insect’s as you would find them down the bottom of the garden, as some people
just have a shed down the bottom and some people have a vegetable patch and
they both have a bottom of the garden where insects gather. Some children, like
certain insects like the ladybirds, snails and many more.
I used illustrator for the first time doing this it was relatively hard to do but once you get use to it. It is easy and the benefits of this were that you can change the colour quite quickly and then you can make certain lines bigger and this makes it so much easier and better and the hardest of this was trying to work out where everything was. Then with my making of the pop-up book the folds folding is quite easy the hard part is trying to push not to hard to just put in a little bend to make it bend better and this was hard trying not to cut any of the folds and i may have made this happen a couple of time but it got fix relatively quickly. the whole of this was easy once getting use to it but starting of and not knowing what to do is the hardest trying not to cut yourself to try and go round edges or make a cut that you should have but anything can be fixed as long as you try. the benefits of knowing all of this made a lot of difference as it would have took me a lot longer than usual because i am not the best artist in the world but is anyone but using illustrator makes me twice as better due to the quickness of changing whatever you want to change and this is why illustrator should have been shown to me ages ago because it makes life easier as it has for making my "The Bottom of the garden" Pop-up book which i think has been a success and this was made by illustrator and the rest but i think learning to use any resource is hard but i wasn't that great on the macs to start with but now i like using them and illustrator.
The Artist that influenced me the most was Nick Sharrat due to the way he creates little mystery adventures that influenced me quite a lot because with my pop-up book i have made a rhyme but at the end there is a fairy who jumps out and says "Boo!", this i thought was a little bit of a mystery due to the fact that the pop-up book goes through lots of different creatures and animals to get to a fairy who jumps out and says boo i think this gives the child inspiration to read the book to remember the rhyme and to get the rhythm as that is key to sell books to children. Nick Sharrat did most of his books on Children and showing the mystery side and the fun side and "Socks" is one of the many books he has done and this shows that anyone can wear socks of any colour and any size and anyone can wear the socks "even the crocodile". I did a drawing on his Socks book and i drew his Sockerel which that could make no sense but it does as it is a sock with a cockerel and the sock is drew in the animal somewhere this gives a sense of adventure and because it is bright it makes it better and shows the book out more because the animals look a lot better and the artist who in this is "Nick Sharrat" and he is very talented to have thought of the idea of the socks with the animals because it isn't everyday you see animals wearing some sock over the mouth or as there body because that would just be weird to see. Nick Sharrat made me think about using animals and giving the reader a sense of adventure and a sense of mystery all in one and it is a short book but it does the trick. He uses a lot of technique drawing these, they were very detailed and specific to humans and made it more mystical and this gives the children more inspiration to read the book. Admittedly His techniques are his own and he has amazing ideas to use in his books. Nick Sharrat has done lovely children's book and they all work well and get a child to make more. This is what every illustrator/author wants to be able to do and some people are talented more than other and he is quite talented within his self.
When i started this course i wasn't expecting everything i got and i wasn't someone that was amazing on computers and then i got shown to using illustrator Photoshop and using a scanner and using different cutting equipment and some i wasn't so quick to say i will use them and i found that my pop-up book went rather well had to have help using the illustrator as i found this the hardest to use and i used this quite a few times after i got shown to using them. All my resources were great for me to use as my book was basic but very something that would be remembered and this is what anyone wants admittedly some things went a tad wrong but if i didn't have the mistakes i have had my book wouldn't be what it is now. The time limit went rather quick when it is needed to be used sufficiently, Computers they have been my main use whether it be to design my mushroom in my book or to design the way that the title has been put on the front of the page as it is quite hard to produce good work but once done it is relatively easy. The main objective for the book was learning how to use Photoshop and illustrator and this is due to me using it quite regularly as it helped to put that slimey sort of look for the title and my name. So all my resources were used wisely and effectively. My skills weren't as good as they should be but that's to be expected and that is because everyone has to learn skills at school and that was mine and then when i had finished my book my skills were much better. When i first started i didn't know whether i would finish in time and knowing this made me rush through some things. This affected how good my work was and this made make my book it may not be the best but i like that, the affect this had on my work was the fact that i know how much time i had and what i had to do and then i made my product and finished all my other bit that went towards it, it came with hard work and a lot of effort was used but it got easier as i started to get the hang of all the resources.
Out of the whole project i found that every single piece of work that was put towards this had its difficulties and had bad bits and good bits but one thing i found more difficult than most things is doing the illustrator trials putting the curves in and clicking in the right places and making the pirate look exactly the same or similar it was hard for me because i had hardly used that programme and finding out how to change the brush size without clicking something else was rather difficult to but it all came together at the end.
I wouldn't change most things in my book but i will make it longer and put more pops in and make the writing stand out more clearly by maybe putting a bit bigger and bolder writing and making sure that my snail wasn't as big as it is and making the caterpillar with more colour and more bigger sized circles.
With Health and safety because we only have an hour lesson each time we do the lesson, The macs have to have wires which could have been on the floor but were put neatly behind them, so we didn't trip over as we were walking around, another health and safety feature that i took a lot of care with was the fact when we were cutting things firstly using a non-slip metal ruler so that when were cutting we cut it straight line and also that stops me from going to close to my fingers. When needing a drink i made sure i was completely away from any electrical equipment due to the fact of health and safety and not wanting an electric shock so this saves me from having that experience and saves the macs from having to be fixed so basically saving time. The school have got technicians so we had all the appliances checked and working quite well, there may have been some waiting because of different features and this helps us to think things through while waiting and this gives me a clearer head to think about the task in hand. It made us have to wait and maybe we might have had more time but not everything goes right. When using computers after an hour on the macs then we have 15 minutes on doing something else this helps our eyes to focus more and doesn't harm our eyes. Health and safety was took very seriously.
