Storybook project – text and margins

* I forgot to add… We also added pages such as the title page and the maze after looking through past students’ works during the last tutorial.

Text

After colouring and finalizing the story, I added the text to the storybook. (The source files were large and it was difficult to hand them to Natasha for adding the text. Since the files were mainly shared between Melissa and me, she offered to add the text. However, she had problems exporting the source files to 300 ppi, so I added the text and Melissa helped me colour instead.) Generally, I added the text at empty spaces and tried to align them to the drawings. For example, in page 8, I aligned the text to the outline of the road.

I had problems adding the text to some of the pages as the drawings took up almost the full page. Thus some of the font sizes are smaller. I didn’t want to use the smallest font size as the standard as I thought it was too small for a children’s book.

Also, for page 21, I had to split “Mama taught him how to do some household chores” as the sentence was too long. Thus “household chores” had to be on the other side of the split frame. If I were to put the sentence on the same side (where Peanut is cooking), then I would probably have to write “He stirred soup” in white, and on the stove. However, I thought the layout would look ugly. So “household chores” stayed on the side where Peanut is serving tea. I hope readers will be able to perceive “household chores” as part of the same sentence.

Melissa also did the page number design from Peanut, and I typed the respective page numbers on that.

Here’s how the book looks like:

Cover

Details

*We noticed a typo in "copyright" just before we printed. Luckily...

Montage Page 1

Montage Page 2

Back Cover

Margins

After I finished the pages, I added a 0.5cm margin around all pages. The margins are white as I couldn’t extend the drawing. (We only realized we have to add margin after a friend who took 2208 before reminded us to. It’ll be too much trouble to extend the tracings and colour again: we were already finishing the book and we had to print a week before it’s due.)

However, I managed to extend the background of the cover and the back cover by 1cm all around (for folding in when we print the hardcover) as there were only 2 pages.

Then we sent the book for printing...