Megan Ong
Assignment 2- Fantasy Book
Our 2nd assignment was where we got to make a non- verbal book based on a specific emotion. When our lecturer first gave a briefing on this assignment, I started thinking about the emotion I was going to do. What I planned from the start was for my non-verbal book to spread positivity and so I was left to choose between hope and happiness. I ended up choosing on happiness because since my book will be spreading positivity, I felt like the emotion of happiness suited the vibe I was going for rather than hope.
At this stage, we were introduced to the 6 thinking caps and were assigned to make a mind map out of it which I found very helpful because it refreshes my mind if I ever forgotten my idea.
I was mostly excited to make this book individually because it was an opportunity for me to test out the skills that I have in making things because I really loved doing anything that was handmade when I was in school.
Planning
Since the book needs to be non verbal, I opted for it to be interactive simply because I think a touch of interactive features makes everything better. When it comes to happiness, I think of all things bright and fun coloured. I tried to avoid any dull colours in the book as it could most likely ruin the vibe I was going for. I wanted to bring a different kind of approach to the emotion so to do that, I made my book into a puzzle game, which means that every page you go through, you would have a solve a puzzle piece in order to find out the true meaning of the entire book that is located at the very last page. There's a rule that no human pictures are allowed or any realistic drawings of human figures, but because my book is based on a character, I made mine cartoonish and tried to avoid any realistic drawings on it. There are 5 pages in total with 4 interactive pages in this book which each sets a specific message that you would need to find out when solving the puzzle pieces. After I was satisfied with my ideas and planning, I quickly moved on to make the book. We were lucky enough to have a 1 week break so I used that time to make my book.
Behind the scenes
To start off , I invested all my materials from the stationary shop such as cardboard, a wide binder, string, stickers, zippers etc. Making this book was time consuming and lot of hard work so I had to stop myself from procrastinating at times. After cutting up each cardboard into A4 sizes, I firstly stuck on some black paper on each cardboard and moved on to cutting up 135gsm paper to overlap on top which I mostly painted on. The interactive features were challenging to do because I needed to be extra steady when cutting the paper using a blade. At this point , measurements needed to be accurate, or else the interactive features would not move properly. I took my metallic gold pen to draw on lines for the puzzles to sit on and I also used it to colour the 3D material that is meant to keep the puzzles in place After putting in all of my effort into making these pages, I moved on to making the actual puzzles which required drawings and the envelopes to put the puzzle pieces in. It took awhile but as soon as I was done with it, I wasn't so stressed out anymore. The outcome of each page looked better than I expected thanks to all the bright colours and the metallic gold pen. After the interior was done, I finished if off the exterior. When I think of happiness, I think that every moment of it should be cherished so I made the front cover look bright and colourful with an image of a camera that overlaps it. I just took some gold tape, my gold metallic pen, tracing paper and the 3D material to create a front cover. The camera was a last minute idea but I was proud of how well it turned out. Summing up this assignment, there were some struggles I had to face at the very beginning but as I began to put in my full concentration, things got much better and I ended up creating a non verbal interactive book which I thought I could never could do myself but I thought wrong. This may not be the best but I did try my best.
Final product
