Illustrated text project - final piece & evaluation

Evaluation of Final Piece

Overall, I am relatively happy with my final piece because I like the story and characters and I’m proud of the fact that I’ve managed to create something using Photoshop and Illustrator. These are not programs that I am used to working with and I have previously struggled using them.

The idea behind this story is based around the promotion of healthy eating through an entertaining comic book story for children aged between 6 and 12, around Primary school age. I wanted the story to be fun and engaging for the reader while having an important moral at the end.

I illustrated the characters using water colour paints and black sharpie pen, which I then photographed and manipulated in Photoshop. I lightened the illustrations, made the colours brighter and the lines bolder, so that the colours really ‘popped’. The backgrounds were simple photographs of my kitchen, which I lightened and contrasted with the illustrations so that the darkness of the photographs draws the reader’s attention to the illustrated characters. 

I created the story based on superheroes as this is something quite specific that most children are aware of, if not a big fan of! I wanted to show that the unhealthy food had been defeated without making the story too violent, therefore fun superheroes was the way to go in my mind! I also looked at the characters from Scooby-Doo as this was more the kind of idea I was going for. The Scooby-Doo series seems to portray solving crimes and working together without showing violence or scaring children.

Although there are two evil characters in my story, the cutesy style that I drew them in makes them appropriate for younger children as they aren’t scary or demonic in any way. Also, the story has a happy ending which leaves children feeling positive and sending them away with a fun view on healthy eating.

The layout of the comic could be better, looking back I think it would look more professional if the text was in boxes as well as the images. I also think it would be better if there wasn’t as much writing and the story was more speech bubble based. It might be a good idea to reconsider some of the words used in the story as a few could possibly cause younger children difficulty when trying to understand.

I think the images are very bold and the cutesy, bright style will attract children and draw them into the story. Hopefully, this light-hearted take on beating fatty foods will sink in to younger children.

The story could be open to sequels as the ‘Super Fruit’ team could be called out to any kind of healthy eating emergency; however the ending is quite closed so that a sequel is not inevitable. This leaves me with the possibility of taking this idea even further if originally successful and loved by children. There is plenty of room for more character development and also the possible addition of more characters, especially evil ones, again, like the Scooby-Doo series.