Project Scope Our group has decided on option 1 (Creating a children story e-book) for our final project. Our story e-book is entitled “Hiro’s cooking Journey”. Our target audiences are children between 7-9 years old. The reason why we chose Option 1 was because we did not have the technical expertise to produce comic strips and frames which were essential for Option 2. Within our project, we will be highlighting mainly the food culture and trends in Singapore. In addition, we will also showcase the process of cooking a well-known dish in Singapore, Curry Fish! For the moral of our story, we will be emphasizing the importance of kinship and how family members can act as anchors in our life and provide social support in times of happiness or sadness. So do enjoy our story and the “mouth-watering” dish presented.
Conceptualization
After thorough discussion, our group felt that we should choose a story line that is more reflective of real life situations within Singapore context. This is so that we can better express our themes and morals within the story which are suitable for our target audiences. By choosing the main character to be a cat, we feel that we can better appeal to young kids through the usage of animal characters. The background and objects used within our story are simple yet effective in depicting the environment and atmosphere of the narrative in a realistic manner. We also included alternate endings so as to create a climax for our readers and also to make our story more interactive on the online platform. And here are some images, stories and tv programmes that we looked at for inspirations.
Storyboarding
Synopsis:
Hiro is a Singaporean cat with Japanese descent. He decides to try cooking curry fish after getting tired of eating raw fishes and buying a recipe book. After numerous arduous attempts, he managed to find the perfect way to cook curry fish. One day, while watching television programmes, Hiro chanced upon a cooking competition which he eagerly wanted to participate in. However, he was met with fierce objections from his parents…
Line by line:
Page1: Hiro is a kitten. His parents came to Singapore before he was born. Having lived in Japan for a very long time, Hiro’s parents love sashimi (raw fish), and they eat them for every meal.
Page2: Hiro, however, is sick of eating raw fish all day.
Page3: One day, while surfing the internet, Hiro came across a video of someone cooking Curry Fish.
Page4: “Mmm.. that looks good, I wonder how does it taste like?”, “Growl~”
Page5: Hiro went to a bookstore to purchase a recipe book so that he can learn to cook Curry Fish.
Page6: Upon finding the curry fish recipe, Hiro decided to try it out in the kitchen. He prepared the ingredients and started cooking.
Page7: Hiro followed the steps in the recipe book. Step 1: Chop the vegetables. Step 2: Throw fish into the wok. Step 3: Ingredients are being added. Step 4: Add in the spices.
Page8: Hiro decided to let his parents try his first curry fish. However, they did not like it. “ The curry fish does not taste very nice, Hiro!”
Page9: “Too spicy!”. “Too sweet!”, “Not bad…”, Perfect!”
Page 10: While Hiro was enjoying his Curry Fish infront of the television, he saw an interesting advertisement. “Wow! I want to join that!”
Page11: “Mummy, daddy! Can I join the Cooking Competition please? Look, I cooked Curry Fish!”, “No! Your curry fish is not nice, and you are a Japanese cat, you eat fishes raw, not cooked!”, “Your father is right, Hiro. Listen to him.”
Page12: Despite his parents’ disapproval, Hiro packed his bag and left for the competition at night.
Page13: After a long walk, Hiro finally reaches the scene of the competition.
Page14: It was going to be a fierce competition. The other competitors included experienced chefs. Hiro was very nervous.
Page15: The competition started and Hiro started cooking his curry fish. 55minutes has passed, and Hiro is still cooking…time was running out! “Oh no, what is the last step?”
Page16: “Give up?” or “Persevere?”
Page17 (Persevere): Hiro decided to persevere and continued cooking his dish. “Oh! I recall the last step!”
Page 18 (Persevere): Hiro managed to finish his dish in the nick of time. All the competitors presented their dishes to the judges. “Time’s up, stop cooking!”
Page 19(Persevere): After a few minutes, the results were out. Hiro was the second runner up but he was upset, as he thought that he could be first.
Page 20 (Give up): Hiro gave up and did not complete his curry fish in time.Page21: Hiro was disappointed and went home disheartened. But surprisingly, his parents encouraged him. “You were right. I should not have joined the competition.”, “ No, I was wrong the last time. You really like to cook and you were right to follow your dreams.”, “Yes, we are very proud of you! Don’t be sad, there’s always next time! With more practice, you can win!”
Page22: “Daddy and mummy are the best!” THE END.
And here are some of our initial sketches:
Furthermore, we also tried out different fonts and typography such as:
1) Storybook fonts 2) Konanur fonts 3) TrajanusBricks fonts 4) Greg's hand fonts
For grid and layout:
At the initial stage of our discussions, we decided that all our texts should be placed at the bottom of the page to facilitate the reading process for our targeted audiences. This will avoid confusion for them in identifying where to read as they flip from one page to another.However, we felt deeply unsatisfied after trying this layout on the initial first draft. This was because the entire story book looked very dull and boring and it gave us a very restricted feeling with not much room of expression. As such, we decided to position our texts boxes in various positions so that our readers can be exposed to a wider variety of options, which will make our story more enticing. Furthermore, our story includes different dialogues between characters and train of thoughts for individual characters. Hence, by experimenting with different arrangements for the texts, we are able to make the whole story more realistic and smooth.
We had chosen the neutral colour scheme for our storybook, because we found that while bright colours scheme is attracting and appeals to young children (our target audience), looking at images of bright colours continuously for 21 pages is too much strain on the eyes, which will not be beneficial for them. Hence, we used a neutral colour scheme for our storybook, in a way such that while small objects such as bottles are coloured with bright different colours, the overall look is neutralized by earth colours (brown), as seen by the different brown shades of the table and the background.
Components of Interactivity:
The storybook will have cooking recipe and a mini game for the children. The recipe is on cooking curry fish head. The children will be encouraged to attempt to cook the dish with the assistance of their parents. This deepens the bonding between the parents and the children which is the moral of our storybook. A “Spot the differences” game will be included in the storybook. Children will be encouraged to spot 10 differences between two pictures (scenes from the storybook). This activity stimulates the children’s mind and gives an added component of interactivity.
Document/Technical Specification:
We decided to produce our E-book using a free version of software named “Flash Page Flip”. This enables us to create an E-book which has the feel of a real book as it allows readers to flip the pages of the e-book with a mouse (imitating the page flipping of a real book). This software helps to make our process of making an E-book easier as we do not have the expertise to make an E-book using other types of software which require more software skills.
Book organization:
We decided on an alternate option in the middle of our storybook. We are going to allow the children to choose their option during page 16: the option to get Hiro to give up or persevere during the cooking competition. This would allow the children to choose their own path in this storybook and have the added interactive features in the storybook.
Problems encountered:
One of the main problems we faced was the differences in the illustration styles of each member in terms of the characters and the background environment. Initially we decided to split our workload, with each member focusing on the illustration of different pages of the story book. However, when we met to collate, we realised that all our drawings were very different in the illustration styles. As all our members do not have the technical expertise, we had to go around and try to ask for help from our friends. But unfortunately, we do not have any friend who was capable of helping us as well. As such, we decided to seek for sources on the internet to aid us in our creation. Luckily, we managed to find the “Flip book” software which suited our project criteria and was easy to use. We also had to manage between the short amount of time we had and the clashes within our timetables to meet up with one another as well. To solve this, we made deadlines for each stage of our project and made sure we compiled to them as much as possible.
Lessons learnt:
One very important lesson learnt will be about teamwork. Our group decided to dedicate different areas for each member to focus on so that we can improve efficiency and ensure that our tasks can be completed on time.We also had to deal with the differences in the ideas of different group members so that we can choose the best idea to present to our readers. This process actually helped us in fostering stronger bonds and made us more critical of each other’s viewpoints.
