Our entire final storybook (screenshots) :D
The results were splendid, especially the stickers - so awesome.
Font Exploration
To give it a more fun and less “professional” look, we decided to look at “handwriting” style font.
Kitsu
Bina Bina Fun
Lele Scribadoo
We chose Kitsu over the other three because it is easier to read, unlike the bina bina fun font which “jumps” all over the place (just like some children’s handwriting!) I personally don’t really like Lele Scribadoo because it has details, which would shout at the readers, and compete for attention with the graphics in the book.
The storybook is almost done :D
After all the planning and sketching, we finally got down to the REAL nitty gritty stuff!
Glenn and Kohji - Illustrators
Jing Yi and Aldrich - Writers/Planner
Me - Colouring Crew
Check out the illustrations :D
Characters - Glenn
Backgrounds - Kohji
It’s my turn to make everything work out. The characters were in Illustrator and backgrounds in Photoshop! It took really long to put them all together, with the differences in line styles because the characters were digitally drawn while the backgrounds were drawn using a tablet (?)
After combining and positioning everything, I got down to the colouring. We showed the following colour samples to a few kids, and they ranked them as follows: Saturated, light, unsaturated, dark. The saturated colours caught their attention first, and are more distinct between colours. We decided on both the saturated and light colour schemes, as a form of contrast. If the entire book was only full of saturated colours, the children might lose their attention. With minor variations such a problem can be solved.
Saturated
Unsaturated
Light
Dark
Subsequently, the way I coloured the pictures was according to the colours in the environment, for example, the setting and the clothing. This will help children be able to identify and find similarities in their own world, and hence relate such cultural values in the storybook into the real world.
Stickman Environment
Chinese Environment
Malay Environment
Indian Environment
Home and Table Environment
I also drew and coloured in the extra “fluff” for our storybook - stickers for an interactive experience for the kids! The only thing is that for this topic on culture, there is real research that needs to be done; colours, costumes, etc. It was a good learning experience.
Chinese
Malay
Indian
Costumes
Working with Glenn, Aldrich, Jing Yi and Kohji for the final group project :D
We came up with various stories:
1. The story of Helpful man. (H man)
He goes around the world helping people. This is a typical “Save the day” story. In this case, H man goes around the world and helps the different cultures in Singapore with various tasks. Kids will understand that helping people is important and one should be selfless when helping the needy.
2. The Lonely Stickman (Version 1)
The story of a stickman being drawn and then later comes to life. The stickman begins to feel lonely as he is the only thing being drawn. He then finds a magic pencil and attempts to draw friends. His drawings ended up to be monsters attacking him. Stickman then battles them with an eraser. Stickman tries many times before successfully draws a few friends. The spirit of never give up is in cooperated into the story. It teaches children that there will be obstacles in the way to success and one has to persevere.
3. A Dancer Who Never Gave Up
Tommy loves to dance and watch people dance but he has 2 left feet. He can never dance properly and James tells him to give up on dancing. He even mocks Tommy. Ciara, Tommy’s best friend persuaded Tommy to be determined to continue to dance and pursue his dreams. After much training and encouragement, Tommy finally made it and became a famous dance.
4. A Boy who doesn’t like people
John is a boy who doesn’t like other people. His mother sends him on an errand to buy some ingredients for dinner. On the way John meets children of other races who try to befriend him but John refuses. When John reaches the supermarket, he gets lost and starts crying. At this time, the character from different cultures came to John’s aid. John realizes that one should offer help selflessly. The children will learn to give selflessly and also learn that friends are important. This story shows the different character from each culture but does not touch deeply into the values of each culture.
5. The Lonely Stickman (Version 2)
A boy draws a stickman on a paper and nothing else. The stickman comes to life and finds himself alone in his world. He decides to get out of his paper and find friends in other worlds. He first stumbles into a Chinese story book where the people are celebrating Chinese New Year. Stickman learns the culture of the Chinese ethnic group then leaves for another world. He then travels to the Malay world and Indian world. Eventually he reaches his own world and begins to feel lonely again. After a while his friends from the other worlds come visit him and the lonely stickman is lonely no more.
Out of the five stories, we chose the fifth story for its strong and direct ability to put across ideas about culture.
It’s to the drawing board after the brainstorming session! Each of us will take a part of the story and come up with some drawing board sketches and mini-stories based on each “world”.
