Project Evaluation

The work I was doing by the end of this project has changed hugely from the type of work I started out doing and had planned to do throughout this project. 

I started out hoping to make an interactive version of my FMP book, although I wasn't really sure where to start and struggled to find ways of successfully managing this. I felt quite restricted by limiting myself to using the page layouts from my FMP, and from having to think of ideas that I could easily make into a page of a book. 

I changed my idea to not limit myself to a book format, and I do think I have managed to successfully produce interactive items to compliment my book. By changing the format of my experiments I hugely expanded the possibilities of my experiments, and therefore changed the outcome of my project. 

Creating interactive items from paper and card to accompany my book has been a really interesting and useful experience. First of all I think it is a great method of promoting my book, as it helps it to stand out in the huge mass of books that are currently on the market. Secondly, I think it is really important in the modern world full of technology and screens for children to still be encouraged to use their imagination and creativity, and I really like the idea of creating simple games and products to help get children do this. Despite all the technology available to them, if you give a child some pens or some paint and a big piece of paper it will keep them entertained for hours, which I think shows just how much children enjoy being creative, and I would really like to produce work that helps to encourage this.

I think the element of craft and children making things themselves has been an important aspect of my project. I think that even the simplest process of "making" a toy, such as cutting out and putting together a split pin doll, encourages creativity and gives children a sense of accomplishment by letting them feel that they have made that toy themselves. 

The amount of kits you can buy for children with activities such as paint by numbers, or glueing together a hand puppet, reinforces this idea that children enjoy going through the creative process of making a toy before they play with it, even if it is a simple process of cutting around a shape and sticking the pieces together. 

As well as the creative side of my products, there is also a very traditional theme. Toys made from card and paper have been given to children for generations as they are cheap and simple,. Because of this there is a very nostalgic element to them. Parents often like to give their children toys that they themselves played with as children as it brings back all sorts of memories, and this makes it an activity that both parents and children will enjoy. 

I have used some of my more successful experiments as promotional material, for example I took my two split pin dolls to London Book Fair, and I put the designs for my first card game into my portfolio.

I got a lot of positive response for these two pieces, particularly the card game designs, and I have since had two companies that I met in London email me about possible future work, so these are definitely pieces of work that I will use again in the future. 

I think quite a few of the pieces of work I have produced turned out successfully, and with a few adjustments I think I can use a lot of them as pieces of self promotion and to sell in my online shop. 

Although my project has been based around the book I have been doing for my FMP, I think that some of the items I have made will be really easy to expand on and adapt to be used for future projects. For example, I have created two designs for split pin dolls using my character and her pet cat, but now that I have experimented with how to design and produce them I can use this information to successfully create other designs that aren't linked with this book, and are perhaps inspired by a book I am working on in the future. 

Overall I think that despite the slow start to the beginning of this project, it has been a success and has provided me not only with promotional material, but also with the beginning designs of many products I can produce for my online shop. From my experiments I have learnt some useful techniques and produced some strong pieces of work that I can definitely use.

I have really enjoyed using these new techniques and seeing my work used in different formats from the usual books or drawings. I think it has given me a fresh outlook on the types of items my work can be used on and with, which will help me to experiment further. A lot of these items, like the dress up doll and the card games, are things I will definitely continue to produce in the future, and I think many of these experiments can be on-going and help inspire me even after this project has finished. 

Dress Up Doll

A similar idea to my mix and match card game, I decided to make a card doll with clothing on tabs to dress up. I drew a girl wearing a basic tshirt and shorts and used tracing paper to design clothes that would fit over the top.

I made small holes to slot the tabs through in her hair, shoulders, and waist, so I had to make sure the tabs on my clothes lined up with these too.

Like my mix and match cards, I wanted a combination of fancy dress outfits and regular clothing to create a bigger variety of games a child could play with it.

Once I had drawn all the clothes I painted them all, and then scanned the sheets of paper. Using photoshop I arranged the girl and all the clothes over two A4 pages, making sure I kept matching items together.

Because I have split the clothes over two pages, it would be interesting to see how themed pages would look. Aside from the basic set you get with the character I could do various pages with different themes, such as "Animals", "Nature", "Weather", "Party Wear" amongst other things. I can fit 3-4 outfits onto a page depending on what kind of items of clothing they are, and that should be enough for each theme, however I could expand this to two pages if I had more ideas for a particular theme.

I could link the style of these with the other experiments I have been doing by adding a dotted line around the edges of each piece, however they are a little fiddly to cut out around the edges so I want to find a way of being able to remove them easily. 

I could make the edges perforated, however this is incredibly time consuming and fiddly unless I had it done professionally, or I could make the clothes into stickers. You can buy sheets of sticker paper that will go through the printer from websites like http://www.craftycomputerpaper.co.uk/, and then cut around the edges of your design. These stickers would be easy to package, as i could put them into cellophane parcels with card stapled to the top to seal it with my contact details on top. This would also give me a chance to mix and match the types of outfits that go together. I could have some parcels that have a theme, and others that are more of a "lucky dip" where you would get a random mix of outfits.

The only big problem I could see with making these dolls as stickers is that it is quite hard to make the stickers reusable. Although stickers will peel off the doll if I have printed it on appropriate paper, stickers tend to curl up and either stick to themselves or lose their stickiness completely. 

I think the best thing to do is try out both and see which works best, although at the moment I think that cutting out the card myself and packaging them in a similar way to how I would package stickers is the best way to produce them.

This is another item that I can continuously expand and add to, as there is no limit on the amount of outfits I can produce for them. 

More Card Games

I really liked the idea of making my work into a game, and I think my mix and match game I had done earlier worked really well as it is completely interactive. I had already also tried making a set of playing cards as a side project, and really liked the effect of these.

I researched children's card games, and found a really interesting website called World of Playing Cards that had information on various card games throughout history. 

http://www.wopc.co.uk/games/index.html

I decided to make another card game, but this time make one where the child has to match two cards together, a bit like the traditional "Happy Families" card game.

My idea was that I could have one card with an image of the child dressing up as or trying to become something, and the matching card would be an image of the object. I used some of the images from both my previous experiments and some experiment for my FMP project, and started to put them together in pairs. I also used the same font as my FMP book in order to make them match.

I kept the format of the cards the same throughout, having the text of the first card at the top and using an image of my character. The second card in the pair has the text at the bottom and is a simple image of the object. The colour scheme for the cards each match their pair, making it easier for children to identify which cards match together. 

However, I would need to keep the materials used and style consistent in a set, I used some images from previous experiments so the material switches between paint and collage. If I produced these as a set I would have to choose one style and use this throughout, as the first two pairs go together, and the second two do, but they don't look interchangeable between all four pairs.

I could make two sets, one of which being very simple and painted like the first two, and the other made of collage and slightly more complicated. This would expand the age group I could market my cards to, as the simple painted cards are ideal for younger children who want bright colours and simple images, and the collaged images are more complex which would be more suited to a slightly older child.

I printed the cards on heavyweight paper at A6 size, and rounded the corners. Put together as a set they look really effective, and the size and weight of the paper make it easy for young children to handle. I had tried printing them at half this size, which is standard playing card size, however this would make it difficult for younger children to handle so I decided the larger cards were better suited to my target audience. 

Making these cards also inspired me to make a game of snap. It's a very simple game to make and play, as I needed to make around 6-8 images on cards and repeat them. I decided to make them smaller than my other cards, as it is a game probably better suited to older children. 

I selected 8 images which would be repeated around 4 times to make a pack of cards, and put them into a grid on photoshop to ensure they are all the same size and give me a guideline of where to cut when printed.  

Split Pin Dolls

Turning my character into a split pin doll is a really effective way of making her interactive.

I wanted to make split pin dolls because once you have the design finished they are incredibly easy and cheap to produce, they are a traditional game that has lasted for generations, and they are something that it is really easy for a young child to make and put together themselves. 

I think the link these dolls have with craft is very important, as a child can put these together with very little help, and then have the satisfaction and pride of feeling like they have created this toy themselves.

The process I use to make my paper cuts for my book means that my character's arms and legs are quite easy to separate from the body using photo shop. 

I designed and cut out a simple posture where all four limbs would move about easily once the split pins are added. Firstly, I scan in my paper cut keeping the limbs separate. 

I had already tried the pieces together before I had scanned them, so I already know they fit together, however I needed to see where they line up so that I can make a mark where the split pin would go. I also had to add the details digitally, such as her facial features. 

Once I had marked on the body and each arm and leg a small circle where the split pins would go I needed to think about how I would present this item. I arranged each piece on a page with simple instructions on how to make the doll. I also added a dotted line all around each piece to show people where they needed to cut, and I think this also added to the aesthetics of the page, making a nice pattern and a feature. The dotted line also matches the lines behind the falling leaves in my book, so it was an effective way to link this to my book. The cut out text also matches the text from my book, so is another strong link between the two and creates consistency. 

I decided to print one off and try it out myself to check it worked and was easy to make. I chose quite thick, matte paper to print on, which gave a lovely effect to the design, however this made it difficult to cut cleanly with a craft knife. It was easier to cut through with scissors though. I will have to try printing them on various types of paper to find a more suitable one.

I found that having 4 split pins on one doll looked a bit too distracting from the design, as they took up alot of the space, and they also seemed to limit how much the other one could move. I tried putting together a second print out of my doll, this time using one pin for the arms and one pin for the legs, which worked much better and looked effective too. I will need to adapt my design to make just two circles for the pins rather than four.

I also struggled a bit in pushing the split pins through the thick paper, however the second time i made one of my dolls I found that cutting a small cross over the hole and slotting the pin in made this much easier, so when I alter how many holes there are on my design i will also change the circles into small crosses.

Once I had created one design I decided to create another using a different character. There is a ginger cat throughout my book that appears on many of the pages, so I decided to make a doll of him too. I also thought this might appeal to young children reading the book, as children always love seeing animals, particularly if they have a pet cat themselves. 

I followed the same process, only this time I used two split pins instead of four. I also used the same format of the design, using the same text and a dotted line to show where to cut. This creates a theme and reinforces the idea that these are part of a set.

The cat was really simple to put together, and even though the size difference is completely out of proportion the two dolls look really good together and I could easily market them as a set. 

This is another method that I could continue to expand on as much as I liked outside of this project, as the character possibilities and combinations are endless.

Next Steps...

Now I have covered the basics and made some simple cut out items I want to try something more interactive and more complicated.

My bookmarks and cut out dolls are great decorative items and nice objects to accompany my book, but they aren't very interactive for children to play with. I want to create some more items and games like my mix and match card game.

I'm thinking about how I can make my cut out dolls interactive, perhaps by finding a way of making the limbs move. I also want to look at some other card games I can make using my theme of wanting to be something. 

I also want to look at ways of presenting my work in a way that I could sell them or give them out as promotional material. The bookmarks would be fine to give out as they are, but I need to think of ways of packaging and presenting my card game and my cut out dolls.

I think with the cut out dolls I would have to present them printed on the card with a dotted line for where to cut, but I would also need to include instructions with this and I would have to consider whether young children would be able to cut them out themselves. Another option would be to perforate the edges of the doll so you could tear them from the paper. I did some research into how and where I could get my designs perforated, and found that you can buy scissors and tools that you can use to perforate edges yourself. Scissors are too big for what I want to cut, they would be fine for straight lines but for cutting anything small or intricate they would be completely useless, so instead I started looking at the tools.

I found that almost all of the tools were essentially just a sharp point that you press into the paper repeatedly around the edge you want cut, and decided that this was nothing I couldn't do myself with a craft knife and a bit of practice. 

First I tried it with the point of a compass, but I found that this wasnt really sharp enough, and didn't make enough of a hole in the paper to get a clean tear. 

Next I tried it with a scalpel knife, and found that after a bit of practice this worked really well, however this is a time consuming job, and although this is fine for a one off piece it is not something I can realistically do for many pieces of work

Bookmarks

Whilst cutting out some of my dolls it gave me the idea of making bookmarks of my character. What better accompaniment to a book than a bookmark? They are ideal items to make to go with a book as they are small, cheap, make ideal gifts to go with a book, and they don't need to be very hardwearing

Rather than making bookmarks that are the standard rectangle shape I thought it would be much more effective to make some that are cut out all around the edges of my character. 

I printed off a sheet of my character designs on thick paper at half the size of the cut out dolls to make them an ideal size for bookmarks, and cut out around them. I then cut a small hole at the top and threaded a small ribbon through and the bookmark was finished. 

Although only small and simple to make, these make sweet little objects that are ideal to accompany a book. They are also easily customisable, as you can make them using almost any design, change the colour of the ribbon, print it double sided to have a design on both sides, or leave the back blank for people to write a message on

Stand Up Dolls

A really simple way to adapt my work and make it 3D is to make cut outs of my character that can stand up on their own. I have already tried this in an earlier post with my basic character designs, but now I have my character designed for my book I want to try this with her.

I can take this experiment even further by making some of the scenery from the pages using the same technique so children can reinact some scenes using these toys. I can try making cut out dolls of her standing in different positions and in different outfits to follow the story of the book so children can have a card figure for each stage of the story. 

The card I have used to print them on is a bit flimsy and doesn't stand up well or look very good quality, so I think from now on I will print my designs on heavier paper, and experiment with rough paper.