My original objective
was to create a treasury that contains fairytales from around the world showing
different cultures fairy tales, where the female characters aren’t stereotyped
to be the damsel in distress. Though I found as my project progressed I found
myself becoming more interested in the culture in my tales rather than the charters
themselves and wanted to show the culture throughout the stories more than the
characters. I found myself looking at different eras of their culture then
choosing when I would base the story, and then I would base the style off what
I found. I also started to base my character design around the culture making
sure they represented the culture fairly and accurately. In the end I changed
my project to be based on showing fairytales from other cultures and showing
children how diverse and interesting other cultures can be. I became so
invested in the diverse nature of my project that it changed without me
realising until I stepped back and look over what I had created. I feel this
shows how this project has grown into something more than just strong female
characters, and has become about how diverse the world is from the subject of
the stories to their cultures and way of life .I want children to now see this
books and take into consideration how different the world is and become more
excepting of this. As it’s important for them to see this at a younger age of 9
- 12 as this is when they start to notice things like this. As a book that
represents different cultures fairy tales I feel it is what I wanted even
though it wasn’t what I originally stated it grown into something more and I
still believe that not all my characters are stereotypical like Atalanta she
shows a strong princess who’s downfall was that she was overconfident as she
was known as a great female huntress and runner, which are usually traits shown
in men in stories.
My final outcome
contains many successful images that illustration the stories and show a little
bit more than just what’s in the text. I have seen that as I worked on the stories
I learnt new things and ways to improve my work such as in my Sedna and the Hunter
images (figure 1) the colour was less developed and this brought down the
images composition and overall look, but when I created the images for The Shining
Princess (figure3) I had learnt from my mistakes on Sedna, and how I could
experiment with limited colour from Atlanta (figure 2) and put this into these
images for The Shining Princess. And I did this and found that the images
worked so much better due to I had considered not only how the image layout but
thought about the empty space and how I would use it along with the one colour to emphasis certain
parts. I’ve never been one usually for spot colour and I just think thanks to
this I now realise I need to experiment with it more to improve not only my
colour usage but it will help me image design and how I create images that use
empty space as part of the image rather than that space just being blank and
not part of the design. So I do feel now I need to go over all my pages that
have yet to be created and go back and consider all these things I have learnt
and apply it to those images before making them in the future.
My original development
work where I looked at artists I feel I should have redone as when my project
grew into being more about culture, as I tended to leave that research behind
and not follow it through into my work as I became more involved with the diversity
and reprsention. So really I should have
looked more into others that did culture fairytales like Daniela Terrazzini whose
work I recently came across; she has illustrated a book called Tales for great grandchildren:
folk tales from India and Nepal, and her representation of the culture in her
illustrations is beautiful and makes you feel as if the culture isn’t alien to
you, making it warm and interesting. I think if I had reviews my artist
research again I could have looked more into people like Daniela who has
already done what I set to create but for a single area. But my initial research of fairytale books did
help me when I created my work as it continually reminded me to make each page
a little different and interesting so not to keep the same page layouts witch I
have done In my dummy book I tried to mix the pages up as much as I could from
double spreads to single images.
While working on
this project I have learned that using limited colour within my illustration
works and that I should continue to practice this, I have learnt about creating
characters from different ethnicities and cultures rather than just sticking to
my own culture. I feel that now being able to do this will really help my
future work as being able to show a range of characters that differ in many
ways is vital in the children’s publishing industry and shows that I am
interested in showing a variety of ethnicities within my work. I have also
learnt that looking into other cultures can really help influence my work in
new and different ways and has added diversity to how I think about my work and
where it can be set. I have also enhanced my skills on programs such as
Indesign and how to self print a dummy book, and that I can use Photoshop to
add colour to my pieces so I have an idea of what it will look like before I
add any colour to the cut image.
My audience was
9-12 year olds as this is the age where you begin to have your own books and
read alone as well as with your parents and having a book that positively represents
other cultures will help their understanding of others. I have achieved in
creating a book that does this and that is suitable for this age rage, though
some of the stories aren’t all happy endings and have some darker tones at this
age you can accept this and also my illustrations help lighten the context.
My book will fit
in with the children’s books industry as it’s showing different cultures in a positive
light and this is what the industry needs with an ever changing diversity
through the nation. I also feel as the stories aren’t your regular fairy tales
we all know and so not every publisher will be interested in this book but I
feel others that like a new idea will like JJ Books who published Daniela
Terrazzini’s book. Though because at the
moment the book isn’t finished I will just be using the images in my portfolio
to show to publishers as they show best what I want to do, but when I do finish
it the book then I plan on self publishing and selling it. Furthermore thanks
to this project I have found an interest in how other countries tell stories
and will continue to let this show through my future work and create work about
other cultures other than my own.
Overall this process has taught me a lot and I now know that
research can lead to new interesting things that will help further my work and
show me things that I can experiment with. My overall work on this project has
been to a good standard especially with my later images which were informed by mistakes
from the first ones. I have researched into each story and created a diverse
book that represents the culture honestly and with respect. When it came to development my thoughts and
ideas became more concentrated and consistent as I worked on each story, taking
more into consideration with each mage I cut. My final images are well crafted
and the cut is of a high quality and shows how delicate and beautiful my work
is, I feel my cutting skills have progressed through this project becoming more
precise and now I will consider colour and space more carefully. I think to
improve this project I defiantly need to re consider all the pages I have not
yet created and make sure they contain the things I have learnt through
creating some of the final images. I have found from doing this project that I
struggle to keep on top of 3 major projects at once and find I only give
attention to two, this has impacted how much work I have done for this and
think that I have worked well under the pressure and produced good work to a
high standard but I’ll need to make sure when I get illustration jobs to
consider how I handled this and will make sure I only take on so many big
projects at once. In the end I have learnt a lot form this project and will
continue to work on it until I finish the book, and may in the future add more
stories, I have achieved something more than what I originally set out as my
project changed into something so much more important to me. I have developed
my cutting skills and learnt how to contain my colour usage and use space in an
image better, I would have like to have had more images complete but due to
other projects and how long it takes for me to cut out an image I feel I still
have done well on this project.
