Final Project: Storybook on Kungfu-rella

For my final group project, I am required to create a storybook for children aged 6 to 9 years old with a maximum of 20 pages or 900 words.

Main Factors to consider:

My group wants a storybook that is colourful and enjoyable so as to cultivate the interest in reading for children. Besides this, the storyline must be kept short and simple to facilitate easy understanding. In addition, we want characters that children will like and are familiar with. Furthermore, we would like to include additional elements such as a glossary to facilitate children’s learning of vocabulary.


Elements to be included in the story:

- A storyline that gives the young readers a space for imagination.
- Correct morals that the young readers should possess.

Aims:

We hope that the story and its underlying messages would be etched in the minds of the children, so much so that they will make repeat reads, and adults will also find it a good and meaningful story to read to their children.

We brainstormed for many ideas for the storybook and settled for the story below:

Long long ago, in the kingdom of nowhere, there live a king and a queen and their beautiful twin daughters. Yet, everyone was biased towards the elder twin, who was more outspoken and confident. One day, the kingdom received news of an inter-kingdom competition and everyone naturally nominated the elder twin. The younger twin longed to join in too. Feeling rejected, she secretly sang to her sorrow by the riverside. The king’s advisor happens to pass by and was mesmerised by the melody. But being afraid to go against the majority, he kept his discovery to himself. Then, the elder twin was taken ill on the morning of the competition. The younger twin stood in and everyone doubted her ability until she started singing and won the competition. Since then, everyone learnt not to show favouritism and hider other’s ability to perform.

Most of us feel that story outline 1 contain the most meaningful moral for our audiences, and thus we decided to work on it. During the process of developing, we found it is difficult to develop a twist and a climax for the story as the story revolves around real life issues. We thought that developing a twist and a climax will also be too heavy and confusing for the children to handle. Therefore, we met up again to brainstorm for new story ideas.

During our brainstorming session, we came out with some morals. They are: the value of true friends, never judge the book by the cover and you can overcome obstacles with a strong will. After our brainstorming session, we decided to work on the morale; a strong will will help one to weather through all obstacles.

Based on the last morale, we came out with a brief storyline for our final final storybook:

Our main character, Cinderella is a poor girl who marries the prince. She is not well-liked by the royalty because she is a commoner. She is very determined, eager to learn things and she sincerely loves everyone in the kingdom a lot. Thus, she went on a mission to save the kingdom from a wicked witch with the help of an old wise man, Wisely. She succeeded and was finally accepted by the royalty. They finally live happily ever after.

The wicked witch, who represents an evil character, finally died. This is to show the children that good acts or deeds will always triumph against evil acts or deeds.
Wisely, the old wise man represents an elderly with wisdom and many skills. The illustration of Wisely as a monk shows that he is well-respected by others and possesses great wisdom.

The other characters such as the king , queen and prince play minor roles in this story. The main attention is focused on Cinderella and whether she will accomplish her mission to save the kingdom.

Finally, our morale of the story is a strong will will help one to weather through all obstacles.

We have tried out many fonts and we have finally settled for New Century Schoolbook for all our bodycopy and Snap ITC for our title. We have used mainly warm colours to attract children's attention and appeal to them so that they will be motivated to read the book. We used art card for cover page and matt paper for the rest of the pages in the book. Finally, I shall present to you our final storybook, Kungfu-rella as shown below:

Problems encountered:

-The tight schedule was the biggest challenge we faced

-The difficulty in coming to a common decision due to everyone’s varying opinions; such as the disagreements regarding the plot

-Sourcing for a printing company that is of good quality and within our budget

-Deciding on the colours for an optimum colour representation

-We have used Illustrator to trace the hand-drawn sketches. However, the quality of the pictures is not up to standard. In the end, we have to trace the sketches again using Flash.

-Due to our haste in tracing, we have missed out certain portions of the sketches and we have to re-trace again.

-After placing the pictures in Photoshop, we realised that we have forgotten to colour certain parts of the pictures in Illustrator, so we have to re-do the colouring again.

-After completing the sketches, we realised that they are not beautiful without a background so we drew the background in Flash.

-The background sketches are difficult to combine with the previous foreground pictures. We end up having pixelated pictures after placing them in InDesign using the Photoshop software.

-Another error we made was not having our files linked properly so the pictures are pixelated and we could not print our storybook.

-Finally, after consulting Ms. Chiang and Mr Alfred, we re-placed the file and re-sized the pictures in Illustrator instead of Photoshop. We also placed all files within the same folder so that there will not be any missing links.

-After all these difficulties, we finally managed to print our storybook.

Lessons gained:

We learnt to work with a really tight deadline to generate a good story. It is necessary to do a lot of research on our target audience to write a story that is suitable for them, and to conduct clear planning. We have also learnt to plan our time wisely so that all the hiccups we faced in this project could be resolved within the stipulated dateline. More research should be ideally done on printers and printing shops before printing our artwork because certain printing shops are not able to print the artwork to our desired quality. Moreover this project has given us the opportunity to learn how to use the computer graphics software, such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash and InDesign in greater depth. In addition, this project helps us to apply the design principles taught in class such as the colour palette, typography, etc. Overall, through this project, we have realised the importance of teamwork. By consolidating each and every individual’s strengths, we managed to learn a lot from each other and put our specialities to good use.

Assignment 5 Colorful Asia

The theme of this assignment is to design a postcard stating my notion of Colorful Asia. Based on this theme, I have decided to focus on the cultural aspect of Asia. I was flipping through my photographs taken overseas and an idea struck me. My photographs taken overseas consist of mainly myself and my friends. The unique part of these overseas photos is the traditional costumes worn by my friends and myself. With these photos available in front of me, I decided to combine them together to form a postcard to illustrate the rich diversity of culture in Asia. The following are the various color schemes for my postcards:

Since, the theme is on Colorful Asia, I have chosen the final full-color artwork above as my final prototype.

My tutorial mates had commented that the photo looks very isolated. The members seemed to be taken from many different photos instead of a group taking a photo together. After pondering over their comments, I have decided to change my artwork as shown below to reflect the cultural diversity of Asia through a group photo of my souvenior dolls bought from overseas. The following are my artwork in 9 different colour schemes.

Based on these artworks, I have the chosen my final prototype as shown below:

The back of the postcard is as shown below:

In-Class Excerise 2

Pei Yi nad I have selected the two words (Clutter and Tough) from the list avaliable in the class excerise. We have used the shapes mentioned in lecture to create the following images below.

Assignment 4

The theme for this assignment (a poster) is save, prevent or kill. In light of the current economic downturn, I have decided to work on the poster using the theme, save money.

The following is the first draft of my artwork:

I have decided to use the $1 dollar note in the wallet to portray a financial crisis faced by fellow citizens. This poster is to urge fellow citizens, who are in financial distress to enroll for the Money SENSE workshop conducted by MAS to help them better manage their finances during this recession.

In my tutorial critic, my tutorial mates commented that the wallet containing $1 is not impactful enough and one of my friends suggested that I show a broken piggy bank with no money inside. Thus, I have re-edited my poster as follows:

After consulting Mr. Alfred, I felt that the idea of saving for rainy days is commonly illustrated in the past and I have decided to change my theme to save our heritage. The following is my first draft on saving our chinese heritage.

In this poster, I am trying to illustrate that the mask is melting due to fast disappearing trade of the Chinese Opera. If we do not try to save it, it will soon be gone. However, the melting effect of the mask is not prominent and it seems as if the mask is made up of different textures instead. Thus, to overcome this problem, I have decided to use a cracked mask to illustrate my idea instead. The big crack shows that if we do not save it now, this heritage will be disappearing sooner than expected. Hence, my final artwork is as follows:

Assignment 3: U C What I C

This assignment requires the usage of 8 photographs to tell a visual story. The ideas for my story are illustrated in the form of a storyboard as follows:

Based on the ideas on my storyboard, I have taken the following photos to represent my story:

This story is about a man getting ready for a date with his girlfriend on Valentine’s Day. He is preparing very well for the date. He is playing the guitar for his girlfriend when she meets him. However, the twist: he is actually a street performer getting ready for his stint at a public place.

During tutorial, my tutorial mates have commented that the 7th photo does not flow with the previous 6th photo. They mentioned that the man in the 7 th photo should be holding to the guitar when he met the lady. Thus, I have edited and replace the 7th photo. My final story is as follows:

Assignment 2

For this assignment, I am required to create a pictogram for NUS Community and this pictogram will be placed within NUS campus.

When I was brainstorming for ideas, the thought of ringing handphones in the lecture theatres and libraries disturbing others came to my mind. With this idea in mind, I decided to develop a pictogram illustrating that mobile phones should be switched to silent mode in the lecture theatres or libraries. Thus, I have chosen a picture of the Samsung slide phone (from the Internet) and performed a 5 steps abstraction process. They are as follows:



Original Photo:

Abstraction 1
In order to signify that the handphone should be switched to silent mode, I have thought of using a cross against a musical note. Although this sign is easily understood, it is very common. Thus, after pondering over Mr. Alfred for advice, I have decided to use a red circle to warn people that the handphone’s ringtone could disturb others in the lecture theatre or library.

Abstraction2:

Abstraction 3:

Abstraction 4:









Abstraction 5:






After developing these 5 abstraction sketches, I decided that Abstraction 4 is the best illustration for a handphone because it is simple and yet, it is able to retain the basic idea of a handphone. Hence, I present my final prototype as follows:

Based on the feedback from my classmates and consultation with my tutor, Mr. Alfred, I have made the following amendments to my 5- steps abstraction process and my final prototype.

The abstraction process is as follows:

My final Prototype is illustrated below:

This final Pictogram will be placed in the library as shown below:

Assignment 1A & 1B

My task is to manipulate the letters in my name to fit myself in terms of personality, character, outlook, strengths and weaknesses. The following are some thumbnail sketches produced during my brainstorming session.

From these thumbnail sketches, I have selected 4 ideas as my preliminary sketches.



My name is illustrated with dolphins playing with ribbons and a ball. Dolphins are very friendly animals, which represents my character towards my friends and loved ones. The first dolphin is a letter “e” and the other dolphin balancing a ball is a letter “i”. The rest of the ribbons are the alphabets of my name (elisa).

Since I have always been fascinated with cartoons, I have decided to give the alphabets of my name some human emotions. Thus, my second sketch shows my emotions and feelings in life.

I am a lover of peace, harmony and freedom. Based on this idea, I have drawn doves flying care freely in the sky. The blue clouds form the letters of my name.


My belief that one should learn to adapt to the environment is reflected in my fourth sketch. This picture shows a healthy growing creeper with the vines forming the letters of my name. My desire is to be equipped with the relevant skills to adapt and thrive in our dynamic environment.

I have decided to develop the idea in my fourth preliminary sketch into the two rough sketches. I have chosen the last preliminary sketch over the others because I believe that it is the best representation of my character.

The first rough sketch is a further development of the last preliminary sketch. The branches of the creeper represent my name and the flower shows that under striving and complicated circumstances (the various varieties of the leaves), one can still blossom and reach one’s maximum potential. This strong survival instinct of the plants to survive and thrive in harsh conditions is one of my dream goals to strive for.

The second rough sketch is a further development of the first rough sketch. It shows a bird attracted by the flower and wanted to feed on the flower. The bird represents me. I am admiring the strong character of the creeper and learning the natural instinct of survival from them.

The feedbacks I have gathered from my fellow classmates are that the first rough sketch is too fanciful and complicated (too many leaves). Many preferred the second rough sketch, which is relatively simpler compared to the first rough sketch. One of my classmates had suggested that I change the bird to a more specific bird (the humming bird) because this species of birds feeds on the flowers’ nectar and it fits in more appropriately than any bird in general. Based on these pointers, help and advice from my tutor, Mr. Alfred, on the Photoshop software I present my final prototype as shown below:

My tutorial mates had commented that my artwork does not have a 3 dimensional feel. They suggested that I burn the edges of my name so that the branches look rounder and hopefully, it will resemble a curved twig. Thus, my amended artwork is shown as follows:

However, the above artwork does not look good. It seems that it has a very thick outline surrounding my name. Thus, I have decided to abandon this modified artwork and stick to my original final prototype as follows: