There have been a few tweaks and changes made in my final product that differ

from the originally planned content. Many of the changes made were regarding
the set up of images in each page, and in the flat plans, many of the scenes were
set up in different ways, with furniture and characters placed around in certain
orders that were not carried over into the final product. The main reason for this
was that the set-up of scenes was dependant on the source image found to serve
as background, which was often varying in the angles and amount of space they
had. This meant that some characters needed to be placed differently. This
explains the differences between the flat plans and final product, but there are
also changes from the storyboard to the final product.

The main change is the addition of an extra, tenth page in the final product
compared to the nine pages in the storyboard. This was because the set up of the
storyboards only allowed for 3 frames per page, and therefore to put in the
additional tenth page, there would need to be a whole extra page containing
simply one frame. In the actual, final product, I split the eighth frame in the comic
into two separate pages, showing the Stepsisters trying on the slipper in a page
before showing Cinderella trying it on in the next page. In terms of other forms of
planning I made for the story, I did not differ from what I had planned.

In general I am quite satisfied with the overall outcome of the images I have
constructed throughout the project of the childrens book. However, there are
still quite a few flaws in the general construction of the images within the
childrens book which I have noticed, that have kept it from being as good as it
could be.

I believe that I have achieved a good, consistent aesthetic running throughout the
book, that balances between a fairly original and unique style while still
maintaining an artistic style reminiscent of popular fairytale imagery, through
the use of colours, lightness and darkness, scenes and images used, and the
designs of the characters that were constructed. I am also very happy with how
the use of fabric textures came out and the effect and imagery it resulted in, to
give the image of textured clothing patterns.

An issue that occurred often throughout my childrens book is that the actual
construction of the characters facial appearance could appear to be quite
inconsistent throughout the book. When I could not simply copy over the face of
a character that I had already drawn, either because it was at a different angle or
some other reason, I drew it again from scratch, and it could often look quite
different to the other versions in the book. Cinderella and The Princes face for
example fluctuate quite often.

In my childrens book, I had separate pages for both image and text. The text
pages preceded each image page, meaning that the background information and
story development was always established first, before an image was shown
detailing the scene or a piece of the scene.

Because of this, I did not have to consider how and where I positioned my text
over my images, nor did I have to make room in the images to put text, so I did
not have to shrink down or cut out things. However, I did create a background
image to accompany all the text pages so it would not simply be a blank, white
background. I created a background image of a parchment texture and a border
of pink roses so that the text pages wouldnt be dull.

Since there was a background image, and not just a plain, stark, white
background, I wanted to be able ensure the text that I used would still be very
clear and visible, while still being a font and colour that was appropriate. The
font that I chose was papyrus, in a rather clear size 30, which still allowed for a
rather large amount of text to be written and still remain readable. The colour
used was a dark brown, which was clear against the background, but rather dull.

I used a variety of text effects, such as gradients, shadows, embossing, and glow
effects in order to make the text look interesting and aesthetically pleasing, while
not being too excessive or unfitting for the theme of the book.

In the actual writing of the story itself, I did not want to be alienating to the
audience of very young children, and therefore chose to avoid words or phrases
that would be difficult them for them to read or be something they were unlikely
to understand at their age. Many of the words and terms I used were quite
simple and easy to grasp, especially for children around the age-range of my
target audience. I also tried not to have excessively long text pages, which was
somewhat difficult because there was quite a lot of the story that needed to be
told through the text pages, and I wanted to tell it as briefly as I could without
leaving out crucial story details.

In the images, as well as the text, I think the book is appropriate for the children
in my target audience 5-8. The images that I have used are often quite lively and
colourful, even in the darker scenes such as in the Stepmothers Castle. I did this
because children often appreciate things that are more colourful and vibrant,
especially at a young age, and I made these decisions of colouring to best appeal
to my target audience. While I tried to maintain a slightly realistic art style for
the characters since they were in relatively realistic backgrounds, I also kept
them having slightly cartoonish appearances so that they would appeal to
children.

One of the tools I used most often to achieve the effects and designs I wanted was
the Polygonal Lasso Tool, which I used to create the shapes of the objects I
wanted to draw in Photoshop such as the body parts of the characters. I also
used quite often the brush tool to fill the shapes that I cut out with the lasso tool
with colour, or to create the details and shading.

I am quite happy with the effects I was able to achieve using this combination of
techniques, as it allowed me to quite easily create the characters and separate
their body parts into layers so I would be able to adjust them and copy them over
and edit them as necessary. During production, the amount of layers that I had
became quite difficult to organize.

In general, I am happy with the outcome of my final product. While it is not
perfect and there are many things that could have been done better, I am
satisfied and content that I achieved the things that I wanted to throughout the
project to an acceptable standard.
My main issue with how things have turned out is that characters that appear
often throughout the story, such as Cinderella and The Prince, can appear slightly
inconsistent in their facial features, as they can change somewhat from page to
page if I was not simply able to copy over their face from another page. For the
most part, however, I am otherwise content with how the project turned out.

Throughout the story there are a few small instances of symbolism occurring.
Some symbolism in the story is shown through the use of lighting within the
scenes. Many of the scenes occurring in the Stepmothers Castle are quite dark as
well as having dark lighting. This can give the symbolic message, even to children
who are too young to grasp more complex symbolic concepts, that the
Stepmothers Castle is not a happy place for Cinderella. In the final page, during
Cinderella and The Princes wedding, they are in a very light coloured room, to
show the contrast to the dark castle where Cinderella began her story.

There are a few groups of people being represented in my childrens book.
Cinderella herself is a representation of both women and black people, while 5 of
the 6 characters within the book are women. The representation of Cinderella is
a positive representation of women and black people as she is the protagonist of
the story and is not shown as having any negative traits. There are two
representations of people of an older age, with one being a positive one (The
Fairy Godmother) and the other being a negative one (The Stepmother) so there
is an equal split.

The planning and research was very beneficial for me when I was working on the
project, and I often went back to my pre-production planning to help me during
the project, and it saved me a lot of time to already have planned out what I was
going to do which meant I would not lose time that could go towards working on
the project and instead spend it on trying to generate ideas, as I already had my
ideas and plans made during the pre-production stages.

While the planning and research was extremely useful, I did not follow it
completely to the letter, and one of the weaknesses of my planning is that I did
not always fully consider how the things I had planned would work out during
production stages. An example of this includes my digital flat plans, in which I
had planned out where my text would go over my images, but did not consider if
this may prove to be problematic during production, which it did, and therefore
resulted in me changing the way I did my text from how I had planned it.

Cinderella is a classic, famous fairy tale that is believed to have existed in its
earliest forms since 6
th
century BC. The story is most famous in recent history in
the Disney adaptation of the story, made more child-friendly than the darker
Brothers Grimm version of the fairytale. My adaptation of the story follows in
Disneys path of making the story child friendly, omitting many of the darker
story elements from the Brothers Grimm tale. One of the things that
differentiates my adaptation of the story to most others is that Cinderella is
portrayed as a black woman, but this is not the first time this has happened, as
the 1997 film adaptation of Cinderella also portrayed Cinderella as a black
woman. Cinderella exists in many forms throughout different media types,
including books, animated films, live-action films and even plays.