So anyway for this final assignment, we have to create a storybook for children aged 6-9, max 900 words. My groupmates are Jasmine and Yong teck. I was in charge of coming up with the story so this post will be just about that for now.
AND so......... I present to yall...THE GODS WHO CREATED THE WORLD!!
This is our cover.
Initial Thoughts:
I thought it was pretty cool to create a storybook for children, but I found the age range to be so friggin subjective and vague. Yes it's just 6-9, but whats 6-9 exactly? That's like K2 to Primary 3, that's a LOAD of difference. I mean when I was in K2 I was such a sweet innocent child who was oblivious to everything around me. When I was primary 3 I started noticing girls and how pretty they are and got my first crush.
Okay but really, in K2 your like still reading simple sentences, when you're in primary 3 you start reading gay books like Sweet Valley High, Goosebumps, The Greedy Rabbit, Famous Five(or Four i forgot) or Bookworm and whatever, the list goes on! Hence, obviously this is a challenge.
Nonetheless, we decided to come up with a story that's obviously for children(probably more suited for the 6-7 years old). That way, we can surf past the ambiguity of whether our book is a children's book not. I mean if we tried claim that 6-9 years old are intelligent kids who can read quite well, then our book will just be....a book, a boring and wordy one. This is NM2208 man, you wanna write a book go take some other module. And we are also saving the primary 3 boys and girls from wasting their precious time which can be well spent on learning on how to flirt with the opposite sex. Besides, how great a book can it be when it's just limited to 900 words?
Work and effort:
Hoo yeah so anyway like I said I was in charge of coming up with the story. Before I talk about my work, here's the summary:
Okay so there were 4 gods who decided to come together to create the world. They are the God of Earth, God of Sea, God of life and the God of time. They all created the world by filling it up with their respective elements.
However, the God of Time was a selfish bitch who wanted everything to herself. So one by one, she went to the other 3 gods and showed them fake visions of the future of the world...bad fake visions of course. She showed the lands getting ravaged, the seas polluted and life at war and in turmoil. Hence, the other 3 gods left.
The god of time however, realized her plan backfired, cause she got lonely and without the other 3 gods, the world became exactly like the fake visions she previously conjured. And so she invited the other gods back and admitted to them her selfishness. The world then started to exist in harmony. THE END
Yep, so that's our story. So just how did I come up with this AMAZING story?!? Honestly, I wrote this up long ago back in camp during my army days. I was just bored okay, plus I like to write.
So I let Jasmine and Yong Teck hear the story and got their approval. We like this story cause it has several morals at the end. That is, things aren't exactly what you expect them to be, we need to work together to make things work and lastly, don't be a bitch.
The story, most importantly, has personality. There are literally 4 different characters. Not only that, they each possess a different element, which brings out the setting of the story(well, at least for the God of Sea, Earth and Life anyway). This we feel, is something kids can easily relate to.
It is also a simple story for kids to understand. In typical children's books fashion, the writing is simple, no big words, and they are mostly repeated.
Here's an example:
"First she went to the God of Earth.
'Hello God of Earth,' said the God of Time. "Let me show you what the future of the world is like.'
'Okay!' said the God of Earth."
So basically, replace God of Earth with the other two gods, and you got the body of our story. I really tried to write this up in an engaging way so it will grip the audience's attention, not just kid's, but anyone. I found this tricky cause I had to be simple yet engaging. So yep, no big words, and there's some personality instilled in the tone and description of the Gods. (Note: Maybe I succeeded in this aspect. Why? When I was writing this up my girlfriend was beside me, and she sat there until I finished it because she told me she really wanted to see the ending. I SWEAR. If I am lying, my balls will drop.)
I got a confession. The above isn't exactly my story. Jasmine changed the ending. Oh~~~ Alden sucks :(
My version's ending goes something like this:
The God of Time realized she was lonely after the other three gods left. Suddenly the world had no meaning at all, and so she too left. The world was devoid of any gods now....except one, the God of Power. "Hahaha" laughed the God of Power. "Those fools actually played into my plan! Now the world is mine!" And so the world was ruled by only the God of Power, and the world crumbled into what we see of it today. The End.
Cool right? It has a twist yo. Plus it's like dark and all.
We presented both stories to the class.... and nobody liked my version. They said it didn't suit the age range. So we went with Jasmine's ending. We felt my version was a little too...dark I guess, plus most kids probably would not be able to appreciate the twist at the end. This final one at least has a happy ending that kids can relate to.
Oh well, too bad. I envisioned two dark eyes on the cover, portraying the God of Power and in the book when he makes his debut, he would have had like his whole hand over the whole world and stuff.
Final Thoughts:
This is the mere foundation of our story to come. Like I said, I felt the age range was very ambiguous. 6 and 9 is a big difference, but nonetheless we took it as it is and made a book for children, children as in kids who are innocent and yet to learn about the real world, not supposedly intelligent young beings. The only reason why we think they are intelligent is because our crazy education system is making learn a bunch of crazy shit way past their age. They are not intelligent, they are just studying.
That's it yall, till then. Peace.
PART 2: On the drawings and such
Okay now I am gonna touch on the technicalities of this book. Below is the mockup Jasmine came up with for the book. As you can see, well hopefully you can, the body of the story takes place such that on the left are the words while on the right is the illustration i.e. pg4-God of time giving fake vision, pg5-illustration of it.
Jasmine by the way was in charge of the drawing. Heh we felt they looked like teletubbies. With Siti's help, we brainstormed a bit and decided to add some doodads and decorate the gods a bit to make them more lively and distinctive. And there's the result.
Yep they went through the stylist and became even better looking now! Here's their story:
Green-looking weirdo-God of Earth: We decided to give him a nicer shade of green and more realistic texture to his body that signifies that he's the God of Earth. He's green by the way, to represent nature. His body is supposed to be a pasture and his head the shape of a leaf(NOT peanut or dick)
Paedophile in Blue-God of Sea: He's blue.........cause he represents water.... Not much change here. You can't see it here, but his whole body is like that of a mermaid. He has no legs, but a tail. It's pretty cool actually. He's supposed to have a watery-effect, like he flows you know?
Fat yellow bitch- God of Life: She's most the chubby and happy looking god here. She has gained a lot of weight through her evolutionary process so as to portray a motherly image; a motherly god that takes care of her children. She's yellow, well, cause yellow is lively and a happy colour and we want her to glow...like your mom.
Red uncle with beard-God of Time: We gave this god a more unfriendly and perverted smile so as to fit the role of being the evil one. One look at her face and you can just tell she's up to no good. As compared to the rest, she looks like she contains the most evil in her. She's has both shades of red and hot pink so as to give a sense of fiery anger in her.
The backdrop:
Jasmine used a different style for the backdrop of the story. I initially thought we could go with like a more cartoony colourful technique to portray a lively world...but that's just my ambitious thinking and since Jasmine took the trouble to draw everything, I shut up. Nonetheless, she used crayons to draw the backgrounds, which turned out to be really nice. It sets apart the characters and the backdrop successfully. Also, the crayon gives a nice old-school effect. Since most of the backgrounds were supposed to portray a disaster of each land of each God(because of the fake visions), the crayon effect gives it a realistic look in portraying castastrophe. However, it also gives a nice effect on what the world in harmony looks like. Here's how they look:
This is the God of Time showing the God of Earth a fake vision of the land dying. Nice right? As you can see the land is in disarray and much of the effect comes from the crayons.
And this is the world at peace(at least some of it). The crayon drawings here give a nice, peaceful feeling, something we feel children can relate to.Alden's useless idea
I thought of filling the background with respective colours of the different gods when the God of Time showed them the fake visions i.e. green background for the God of Earth. Here's an example:
However, this did not pan out cause it looked really bad printed out. It made the page looked very smudged. Besides, adding colour this way would spoil the consistency of the pages i.e. page 4 is in white, to make it green would make it very weird as the fonts are in black(refer to below). Hence, we decided to stick to plain white backgrounds.Part 3: On the fonts and stuff.
For the fonts of the writing Jasmine used Poor Richard. Oh Jasmine wrote everything out too. Poor Richard was used cause it was easy on the eyes, so kids can read it easily. Here's a page:
Siti then gave us her input, to space out the paragraphs because kids may find it too wordy on first look if we don't. So Yong Teck edited it. I also changed the font of the first letter of each page cause it looks fancy and gives it a nice effect. Lastly, Yong Teck reduced the width of the text by a little bit. This was done to avoid the words being squeezed to the centre of the book, where the binding is. And here is the result.
So yep that's the story. As mentioned earlier, this is the format of the story, left side words, right side picture. I hope you guys can visualise.Final thoughts:
This assignment was definitely tougher than the rest. We had to work together as a group and come up with a storybook, which entailed several pictures. All in all, it was okay. Wasn't that bad. I had fun. Heh, much credit goes to Jasmine though since she did the drawings. Yong Teck too for coming up with the design document. Great work guys. I must say I learnt a lot when it comes to telling story, especially to children. Everything must be focused on, font type, writing, drawings, colours, you name it. Also, we proved that not everything has to be done with Photoshop or with a computer. Old-school, real-school drawings work too. Look at ours!
Still, I hope ours is good. Presentations were held last Friday and some groups did great jobs too. Others had excellent artwork and stuff.....WELL, but it can't beat our old-school crayons! Not to sound competitive, but I hope we did well. I am banking on the fact that ours is unique.
Peace.
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