For this assignment, my group and I were assigned to create a book that took inspiration from a specific New York location. We decided to choose Grand Central Terminal as we were inspired by its stunning architecture.
After visiting our location, my group and I decided to create a children’s picture book. While creating the actual physical and visual aspects of the book, children’s needs and wants were taken into consideration. The intimate size fits perfectly in a child’s hands and the texture of the cover offers a tactile interest. The cut out doorway in the cover offers a glimpse into the books colorful interior, puqing the child’s interest.
That doorway reveals the main character of our story, a little creature from another world. The viewer follows the creature through Grand Central as it explores, highlighting various landmarks inside the terminal. Later in the story, the creature interacts with a human and the moral of our story, “don’t judge a book by its cover” is revealed.
We were inspired by the use of multiple perspective that we discussed in seminar. When looking through our book, there are multiple examples of perspective that can be found. The story is open ended and is up for interpretation, allowing the viewer to have the ability to create their own idea of what is happening. The use of no words in the story helps it to remain up to interpretation, people of all ages and cultures are able to understand the same message through visuals instead of words. The most obvious use of perspective is through the views of the characters, especially the views of the creature. The story also has two endings, one darker and one more optimistic. The difference in perspectives allows for the moral of the story to shine through. The multiple endings also was a compromise within the group so everyone would be happy with the plot of our book.
For the book, I edited the photos and created the backgrounds and atmosphere in which the story takes place in. The world in which the character resides in is as important as the character itself. The color scheme was given careful consideration when creating the book, I decided to utilise bright colors that would pull the reader into this new world and compliment the creatures own color scheme. The biggest obstacles I was confronted with during the project was editing the photos as quickly as possible while also making them good quality, I needed to be fast and efficient so I could hand off the photos to the next group member.
In the end, we created a book that’s easily interpreted by children, utilizes multiple perspectives, and is connected with a solid cohesive theme throughout the story. Our group learned to how to share our ideas and compromise on certain aspects of the book, working together we managed to produce a book that we all were proud of.
