Introduction:
For my Final Major Project, I had to create something with a unique selling point. I chose a movie quiz book, based on their costumes. For this, I would be re-creating illustrations for different films, so people can guess what film it’s from or which character it is. In this project, I created a blog and a sketchbook, as well as using the Adobe programmes Illustrator, InDesign & Photoshop.
Research File & Sketchbook:
To gather research for my blog, I made a list of things to research such as online and app quizzes, Text Effects, Tutorials such as ‘Creating Filmstrips on Illustrator’, Board Games, Books, and many more. Navigating around my blog is not so confusing, I have it in Categories and then Sub-Categories underneath, so it’s organised and easy to navigate around. The blog was used for my Research file, and anything else written. I used my sketchbook for everything creative and sketched. I decided to pick both as I thought it would be easier to annotate all of my illustrations in my book, instead of waiting ages to upload them all onto my blog. I also thought that my blog would be over-crowed with loads of sections in it, and I know how easy it is to put a post in the wrong category.
Creating the Illustrations:
To create the illustrations for my book, I grabbed an original image, and pen tooled the costume/hair/detail of the illustration. For some illustrations, I found that I didn’t need to pen tool them, or carry on with the pen tool myself when the original image is cropped. I also used different shapes such as the curved tool for a mouth and shirt collars, circle and line tool for glasses, buttons and 3D effects such as holes (for Friday 13th movie) and necklaces like Marge Simpson’s.
Before, I was going to do loads of main categories as well as movies such as games, TV Shows and Music and still have the costume/outfit idea. However, this would’ve given me far too much work, so I stuck to the topic Movies. Also, I was originally going to do eight illustrations for each section, but cut them down to five, then cut them down even more to four because of the amount of time we had for this project, although I could’ve started doing the illustrations earlier on.
When it came to the harder illustrations such as Star Wars’ Princess Amidala, Dark Shadows, Borat, The Joker, Wallace, the Anchorman Illustrations and the Mad Hatter, there was a lot more detail. For Princess Amidala, her headwear took me ages to pen trace and there was so much detail. For Dark Shadows, Barnabas Collins’ hands and fingernails were tricky as I had to pen tool each fingernail and they were very awkward shapes. For my Borat illustration, I thought of adding some detail such as his badge. For this, I had to zoom in really close, and pen tooled the badge from the original image. In the end when I placed the finished illustration in my book, the badge was hardly shown. The Joker was tricky because of the suit. I had to keep arranging the shapes I pen tooled around quite a bit, and the colours was quite hard to match. For Wallace, his teeth were the hardest to pen tool as the top teeth had to look bigger than the bottom teeth and they were all different shapes and angles. The Anchorman illustrations from the bonus round, were slightly hard to do, as all four of them wear suits, and finally the Mad Hatter was quite tricky as the detail on his bow tie was all pen tooled. It was also quite hard to trace round his hair.
The illustrations I’m pleased with are Borat, Harry Potter, Oompa Loompa and Wreck It Ralph. I wasn’t so pleased with illustrations like Gravity, Twilight (because of the fangs), After Earth, Augustus Gloop and Violet. I didn’t feel like I put much effort into these. An example of this was my Gravity illustration which was just a blurred spacesuit which could’ve been much clearer and more suited to my other illustrations.
Time Management:
To make my final project more organised, I created a schedule of what parts of my project I needed to complete, and what date they should be completed by. I partly met my schedule, except I didn’t mention the bonus round on it as I thought I’d have the bonus illustrations under the genre, so I had to update it on my schedule. Some of the illustrations took the most time, as I added some detail to them. Also, putting the book together took a while, as I wanted to add graphics to the backgrounds, which took extra time.
Some of the illustrations I created also took me much less time than others. These were Keith Lemon: The Film, The Ring, Grease, The Incredibles and The Wizard of Oz. I thought that The Ring would take much more time than I expected, but It was literally the hair and costume rags I had to pen tool around. Creating the titles for the sections in my book also took far less time than I thought. Although I had to go on Photoshop as well as Illustrator to make sure there’s no white fill in-between the letters, it still didn’t waste any time on this project.
To improve my schedule, I could’ve written down the dates that I managed to complete the tasks. I also could’ve worked out estimates for when my book would arrive for example. I also didn’t mention other parts I needed to do on my schedule, such as creating the graphics for the backgrounds in my book.
About My Product:
I like the product I created for my FMP, as its different and fun. I’m pleased with the layout, text and fonts and illustrations on it, as it’s colourful and completely different to any other quiz book you see in shops. The front cover also looks great, and it really makes you want to take the quiz. I wasn’t so proud of some of the illustrations as said previously in my evaluation, however I felt my font wasn’t strong enough for my book and I had to use a PC when designing my book as it didn’t have the font on the Apple Macs. I also wasn’t overly proud of the front cover title’s font, layout and colour, as it doesn’t really stand out as I thought it would and still seems slightly dull for this colourful book.
If I could redo this project, I would make sure I had a font which I can access on a Mac as well as a PC. I would also (especially if I plenty more time) put an extra page in my book having follow ups to my book which I would possibly create in the future, and I would come up with names for them and design logos too. The only problem with this is because the book has to be even otherwise there would be blank pages when it’s printed, so it would’ve take far more time, considering how much time we had for this final project.
Sending to Print:
To get my book published, I used the company Book Printing UK. There was so much helpful and useful information on the website, that I didn’t need to ask any questions before sending. Sending my product to print was surprisingly easy and ordering the books and signing up to view my order was pretty straight-forward and I didn’t get confused with navigating through. The printing company were pretty reliable, however other people’s books took past the deadline to arrive. When I emailed them wondering when my 5 copies will arrive, they said that it would take 7-10 working days and that was the week before the end of year show. However, they kindly said they would do mine by Friday so the five copies would be sent to me on Monday, when I mentioned there was a deadline I needed them by.
The only issue I had was when I uploaded my book onto the site and checked through my book to see if there were any mistakes. I spotted a few where one image was a missing link, so I saved it under a different name and it was the same as the one in that bonus round. That was a very big mistake, and it would’ve messed up my FMP. The other few mistakes I found out were answers I wrote down, which were captioned underneath the wrong films, so that would’ve probably gave me less marks too. As I spotted these, I then edited these mistakes on my FMP after the deadline, and uploaded the final file onto the site. However, I couldn’t delete my messed up FMP I uploaded first, as it didn’t give me an option to. I then decided to email the company so they could get rid of the file for me and they managed to do that straight away which was excellent.
Final Product:
When I received my proof copy through the post as a booklet, I was very pleased with it and it didn’t have any mistakes inside. I spotted a few faint lines through the coloured background on a number of pages, but it was hardly noticable.The size of the book was how I expected it to be, and the weight of pages was more than I imagined and makes the book look so professional. The writing on the contents page was bigger in size than I thought, but it didn’t bother me at all. The five copies I received the day before the end of year show were all neatly packaged, and looked better than the proof. They managed to print them really well and clear and I’m pleased how well the colours all came out in the end.
My FMP Blog 