This is, as Reddy put it during lecture, the "mother of all assignments", as we had to create a full colour illustrated storybook for children in groups of not more than 3. Jasmine and I teamed up for this assignment, and since they were only two of us, we were thinking of doing something simpler and suitable perhaps for younger children to read. We had 3 weeks to a month for this task, the first week being the development of the story and full scale roughs, the second for the design document and the third/fourth weeks for the final presentation.
Concept generation, on my part at least, was quite a daunting task as I went through several of my old storybooks and tried to find something in common in them, the X-factor that endears such books to children's creative and questioning minds. While I found it hard to put myself into the same shoes occupied by myself more than 10 years ago, I tried my best, and discovered that most stories had familiar characters for readers to identify with in the beginning, with conflict and obstacles faced by these characters soon after followed by the resolution and the "happily ever after" ending. They also usually have a moral to the story, something that teaches kids about the lessons of life, from self-discipline to helping others in need. Although my creative juices were running dry, I managed to come up with an underwater-themed storyline (inspired by the cartoon strip Sherman's Lagoon) with fish as protagonists but with very human-like morals and behaviour. Its lesson is to teach people, especially siblings, to share their belongings with each other. Here is the story, along with the description of how I visualize the illustration to look like in the sketch:
1. It is Christmas time in the Finns’ underwater home. “Time to open your presents!” Mama Finn told her two sons, Sunny and Cloudy.
Description: Inside of a home (simple wallpaper), Christmas tree with two wrapped boxes under it. One is cube-shaped, the other is rectangular. Mama talking to her two sons who have smiles on their faces.
2. Sunny and Cloudy happily unwrapped their presents under the Christmas tree. Sunny got a ball and Cloudy got a train set. Both liked their presents. “Thank you Mum!” They told Mama Finn. “Now go share your presents, my sons!” She replied.
Description: Sons holding their new toys with unwrapped boxes on the floor, again with excited looks on their faces. Mama beaming at them.
3. However, Sunny and Cloudy did not want to share their toys. They wanted to keep them for themselves.
Description: Showing split images of Sunny playing with his ball and Cloudy playing with his train set alone. What should the line separating these two images be, if it is necessary?
4. One day, Sunny woke up to find his ball missing. He searched all over the house for it but could not find it.
Description: Sunny sitting on his bed with a cloud speech bubble showing his ball with question marks surrounding it. He has a puzzled look on his face.
5. Upset, Sunny swam outside to find Cloudy playing with his ball.
Description: Sunny from a short distance away (with simple ocean background), spotting Cloudy playing with his ball, probably bouncing it.
6. Angrily, Sunny yelled at Cloudy, “Give me back my ball!” But Cloudy refused. Sunny then tried to snatch the ball away from Cloudy.
Description: Both brothers engaging in a tug of war with the ball with vexed looks on their faces.
7. However, the ball slipped from Sunny’s fins, flew across the water and landed on a sea urchin. The ball burst.
Description: Ball in mid air, motion lines emanating from Sunny’s fins to the ball to a sea urchin some distance away (draw shreds just above the sea urchin to represent the burst ball). A ‘POOM!’ (or equivalent bursting sound) in bold, caps above the sea urchin. Both brothers staring with shocked looks on their faces.
8. Mama Finn swam by and scolded her two boys, “Look what happens when you refuse to share your belongings! I hope you two have learnt your lesson.”
Description: Mama yelling at them angrily; both sons looking down in guilt.
9. Sunny and Cloudy went back home and thought over what they had done. Sunny said, “I am sorry for yelling at you just now.” Cloudy said, “I am sorry for stealing your ball.” They shook fins.
Description: Both brothers shaking fins with each other with contrite look on their faces.
10. The brothers then decided to play Cloudy’s train set together. They learnt that sharing their toys with each other is more fun than playing alone.
Description: Both brothers lying on their stomachs looking at the train set.
To me, this was a rather "safe" storyline but it somehow lacks excitement and creativity. Jasmine suggested writing a story based on the theme of magic and fantasy since this is the genre that seems to appeal to kids. After reflecting on the widespread appeal and success of fantasy-themed books like Harry Potter and computer games like Might and Magic, I thought that was not a bad idea. While trying to generate an idea for such a story, Jasmine came up with the following idea:
"Once, there was a boy who lived in a forest. His house might probably be the shape of a mushroom.
This boy will go to his garden to pluck mushrooms to make stew every day. so one day...
he realized there was a new plant at his garden. He had completely no idea where this plant came from and what plant it was.
However, he watered the plant and decided to continue growing it in his garden. The next day, he realized the plant had grown much taller than the other plants and also had berries in the shape of a moon. Also, he realized that these berries will glow at night.
Something woke him up in the middle of the night. he heard someone talking over at the garden. he peeped out of his window. He saw a few angels working at the garden, plucking the berries from the plant.
He went out to the garden and one of the angels started talking to him and explained to him that the plant will only grow when someone showered the plant with love and care. It also mentioned that the berries are for baby angels. The boy promised the angel that he will continue to look after the plant.
After the angels have left for that night, he went back to sleep with a smile on his face."
After reading this story, I felt that it was a pretty good idea, but it lacked something (call it the X-factor) that might hook children to the story. Then, it dawned on me that such a story would be more interesting if it had a conflict as well as its subsequent resolution. Hence, I thought for some time about what kind of conflict it should have. Logically, since it had angels in it, an appropriate villain that might stir up a conflict would be none other than.... a devil. Furthermore, I refined the storyline so that there would only be one adult angel involved, and that the strange fruits will actually burst to "give birth" to a baby angel, giving the plant/tree an even more mystical quality, hence being a suitable target for a devil to destroy. Here is what I had:
1. Once upon a time, there was a little boy called Peter who lived in a forest. His house is the shape of a mushroom, and he will go to his garden to pluck mushrooms to make stew every day.
2. One day... he realized there was a new plant at his garden. He had completely no idea where this plant came from and what plant it was.
4. Suddenly, an angel came by in a flash of white light and said, "Hello little boy. My name is Arne. Would you mind looking after this plant for us? Please water it regularly; it is very important to us." Peter agreed to do so.
5. Over the next few days, he watered the plant regualrly and soon realized that it had grown much taller than the other plants and also had strange fruits in the shape of a moon. These fruits glowed brightly at night.
6. One night, Peter was walking by the plant when suddenly, one of the fruits burst and out came a baby angel in a flash of white light as brilliant as that surrounding Arne. The boy stood rooted in awe. "So that's how angels are born," he marvelled. More angels were born during the next few days.
7. Another night, as Peter was sleeping, he was awoken by the sound of wicked laughter coming from the garden.
8. He came down to the garden and found an evil devil holding a pitchfork and approaching the plant. "Stop!" Peter yelled. "You shall not harm this plant!"
9. The devil laughed again and said, "If I cannot harm this plant, then I shall destroy your house instead! Wahahaha!" Peter thought of the adorable baby angels, resolved to protect them, and replied, "Sure. Go ahead then. Destroy my house!"
10. As the devil turned around and began to approach the house, a flash of white light appeared and Arne emerged from nowhere. He yelled in a loud voice, "Go away devil! You do not belong in the land of the living!"
11. The devil screamed, "Noooooo!" He then turned into a bat and flew away into the night sky.
12. "Thank you for being so brave to protect our children, little boy. Here is your reward," Arne said to Peter gratefully. Suddenly, all the fruits of the angels' plant burst and were replaced by edible fruits that Peter enjoyed for a long time.
Although I did not manage to send the whole storyline to Jasmine (because my laptop crashed soon after I wrote it), I managed to describe it to her in bits and pieces. She suggested that perhaps we should have the boy (whom will later be renamed as Ethan) water the plant on his own accord without the angel having to tell him to do so. This is so as to make the boy's act seem even more noble. Also, she suggested to have the boy beg the devil not to harm the baby angel while coming between both of them. I agreed with them and also felt that there was room to compress the story even more so as not to lose children's attention (since younger children have shorter attention spans). In any case, the moral of the story is to elevate bravery and self-sacrifice when helping others (as shown in Peter daring the devil to destroy his house instead) and that one would be rewarded for doing so. With that, she agreed to do the sketches while I continued to work on the storyline as well as any other relevant logistical issues, which pretty much set our roles for this assignment.
At this point, I would like to redirect my readers to Jasmine's blog/journal when it comes to discussing the thought process regarding the illustrations for our book. I would still comment on the storyline and miscellaneous logistical issues that we have faced.
Here is the compressed storyline. Note that there are some changes from the previous one:
1. Once upon a time, there was a boy called Ethan who lived in the hills. He goes to his garden to pluck mushrooms every day.
2. One day, Ethan discovered a new plant with purple leaves in the garden. He had no idea what it was or where it came from.
3. He decided to water the plant. By night, it had grown into a huge tree with strange, crescent-shaped fruits that glowed brightly in the dark.
4. One of the fruits then burst open and out came a crying baby angel. Peter stared in amazement and said, “So this is how angels are born”. Suddenly, a devil holding a pitchfork came by and tried to shoot at the baby angel but missed.
5. Ethan burst into tears and begged the devil to spare the life of the baby angel. But the devil laughed madly and got ready to harm the baby angel again.
6. Out of nowhere, an adult angel flew by and cast a magic net onto the devil, trapping and burning him. “Noooo!” cried the devil before he melted away in flames, sent away to hell forever.
7. The angel looked gratefully at Ethan and said, “Thank you for trying to save the life of my little child”. All of a sudden, all the fruits of the tree burst open to reveal more baby angels. One by one, they followed the adult angel and disappeared into the night.
8. The next day, Ethan discovered that there were many different edible fruits such as bananas, apples and grapes hanging from the tree. He enjoyed a never-ending supply of fruits for a long time to come.
During the following week's tutorial, we presented our rough sketches and Siti wanted us to decide on a suitable age group for our storybook as well as the book size. We then set the former to be ages 5 to 8 years old and the latter to be 8.5 inches by 7 inches (a size suitable for a full page illustrated book like ours. In response to where we would place the text, we tentatively stated that it would be on a white blank space, even on a separate page if necessary (so as not to clutter up the image). One of our classmates thought that the location of our story was rather static but we explained that all the action happened in one boy's garden, so we did not have much flexibility to change to other locations.
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