Comprehensive Synopsis.

Alfie is a Alligator who lives in a lake with his family and friends. Alfie struggles to sleep at night, he finds that he can be happy some days but others he is sad. When he is in social situations he easily blushes and gets embarrassed and finds himself being anti-social. He feels as if he is alone. One day his mother and father notice his feelings and ask him if he is okay. He tells them everything and they support him through getting better, he can finally sleep at night after he has talked about his feelings. He finds situations a lot easier to deal with, all because he has talked to someone who cares.

My overall idea for my book is a picture book for 5-9 years olds dealing with social anxiety. As I have stated before, this is a subject that I relate very closely too and I am aware that it affects a lot of people, especially kids. Even though I know it affects a lot of children I don’t feel like many people are aware of what the symptoms are and some people mistake anxiety with depression. I wanted to tell the story and show the symptoms of anxiety and my personal way of making myself feel better which is to talk to someone about how you feel. I showed all symptoms such as feeling sad, insomnia, low, embarrassed, anti-social etc, but I also showed that you can be happy sometimes. I showed this through the character Alfie as I felt alliteration works really well in children’s books and it keeps the book lighthearted as I wanted my book to be eye catching and also I didn’t want to portray anxiety in a dark and dull way as that is not what anxiety is about in my opinion, anxiety is about feeling too much emotion all at once and that is portrayed in all the different colours and details. At the end of the story I included all types of people that children can speak too as I am aware not every child has a parent to talk too, so I tried to keep it relevant to most kids by including teachers, careers and overall family.

 

My overall message in this short picture book was to tell children, no matter how you are feeling, always know their is someone to talk too. It may not be everyones way of dealing with anxiety but from my experiences, if you don’t talk to someone about it, all your emotions seem to pile up and you end up feeling worse. I also wanted to show that anxiety isn’t always a bad thing, and despite the intense negative feelings you may have, you have to remember you need to find a way to balance out the emotions and let it all out which is my own personal way of dealing with my own emotions.

Finalised Picture Book.

I have finally finished my children’s picture book “The Anxious Alligator”. The style I went for was inspired by the book “Monkey Nut” – Simon Rickerty and the illustrator Steve Simpson. Combined my overall style was kept simple but vibrant by keeping the background completely bare and going into details in the actual alligator image. Also another style from Rickerty was the scribble effects on the supporting graphics. I feel that it reaches the audience well and keeps it modern.

I have tried to relate every illustration to the text so the images could potentially read the story even without the text. The dimensions of my book are 28 cm x 28.5 cm. The reason why I went this big is because of the amount of detail that went into page 2 and 9, plus all the details on the alligators themselves. When it comes to children’s books I also used to prefer he bigger books as the images were also big. Unfortunately due to the file size WordPress wasn’t allowing me to include it in this blog.

 

Final Book Layout.

For my final book layout and overall style I have designed it so the whole background remains white, with the highly coloured and detailed images. I have also created the supporting graphics so they look like pencil scribbles. In terms of layout I am keeping the text at the top of the pages, with the images underneath. I have chosen the font “Luna” from freedesignresource.com to be my story font as it’s very different and contrasting from my title font, however keeping it green to keep it consistent.

Even though I have made the pages completely white, I have added a full animated image on the insides of the front and back cover, the front with a rain cloud and the back with the sun out to show the development from sad to happy throughout the book. I am going to experiment with putting the images in different sizes and positions of the book to experiment with movement and physical movement.

Alligator Final Style.

As I was illustrating the different emotions of the alligator, I realised that it would look a lot better if I anthropomorphised the alligator a bit more and make him stand up like a human. By doing this I am able to convey my story through the pictures a lot better and makes it easier for me to design different positions for the alligator. Also I think its easier for children to relate too if I do so.. I also feels like this shape of the alligator creates more personality and I can do a lot more with it than the old one. However I am keeping the grain effect and the colour scheme.

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I have also started to create the alligators parents, again making them similar to humans by adding clothes onto them.

 

Finalised Alligator Illustrations!

I have finally finished my illustration for the picture book, I took the same image and applied different emotions that I could use in my finalised book. What I like most about this design is the use of the gradient and colours. I really makes the character stand out. I also feel like this illustration is very flexible and will allow me to create different emotions and hopefully will be able to recreate different characters, like a whole family of alligators. I have also decided to keep the grain effect for this as I felt it really does create a really nice texture to my overall design and will allow me to keep my supporting graphics. ALLIGATOR EMOTIONS-05

 

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