FINAL EVALUATION

For my final major project, I chose to create a non-fiction picture book about the true story of a scientist, artist, and rule-breaker Marianne North. Throughout the development of this project, I have taken as much care as possible to ensure that every aspect of making has been documented thoroughly. This has not always been successful and at times, in truth working independently has been hard to stay motivated. Especially in the past few years of the pandemic, being at home most of the time meant we do not have to worry about going out and seeing people. Despite this, taking away these pressures temporarily, the fear of having to eventually return to normality was sometimes hard for me. I feel like there are massive gaps in my learning due to the pandemic and there are certain things I feel I should know but I don’t. It’s no one’s fault, the pandemic has put a huge amount of extra strain on staff, students, and everyone, but I hope in the future employers are understanding. However, through all the trials and worries over the past years, I feel I have created a product that will hopefully engage and inspire others about Marianne North, but just how well did I do in developing this product? This evaluation will attempt to unveil all the views and opinions I have on every aspect including what I thought went well, what could have been done better and what I feel I could have done differently if I had more time.

To ensure my finished product would be of the best quality possible, I began development by searching for graphic novels, and illustrated books about the life of scientists and adventurers identical to Marianne North, such as Evelyn the Adventurous Entomologist by Christine Evans (author), Yasmin Lmamura (illustrator), Ocean Speaks: How Marie Tharp Revealed the Ocean’s Biggest Secret by Jess Keating (author), Katie Hickey (author) and Shackleton’s Journey by William Grill (author). Researching how illustrators publish books has helped me plan out the stages of making a picture book. I explored how visual and verbal language can playfully interact to enhance the narrative and experiment with different visual storytelling techniques such as the vignette, the spread, the panel, and more.

While I am satisfied with the research I have undertaken to properly shape this project, one of the things that I feel I could have done better would be to continue to read Marianne’s autobiography Recollections of a Happy Life which could provide a sense of a variety of North’s life. I Feel I could have used the opportunity to read her second volume. Additionally, to acquire further inspiration and provide a sense of a variety of studying Marianne North is to visit the archives collection in Kew Gardens, which includes personal papers of Marianne North and other individuals including Charles Darwin and Joseph Hooker who encourage her to travel.

When the development of my product began initially, I had to express an interest in developing a journey about Marianne North’s life in detail. As research and writing continued, however, I began to realise that this would be too overwhelming and an enormous task to explore so this was ultimately changed to focus on the most important highlights that shaped North into the person we know today. I want to create something that would explore the importance of nature as well as

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p. 22 discuss a subject where women were overlooked, so this is a nice project to bring her work back to the masses. Despite changing the project from its original form, I still feel that the product I have created reflects my original intent which was to create a picture book about North and nature that everyone could engage in freely.

Before reaching its final form as a book, this project was originally intended as a detailed visual information picture book like William Grill’s Shackleton’s journey where he creates small details narrative driven panels of information without using a lot of words. My other original intention was to make a wallet for the book, so that it would look like a case that North might travel with. Unfortunately, this is my first time writing and illustrating a picture book, I was quite slow with the making of the product and struggle with time management. Although this change of plan could easily have threatened to dispute the development of this project, I nonetheless felt both compelled and determined to get my project made regardless of the circumstances.

When it came to creating the book, I used Procreate to make the final artwork, and then put them in InDesign. Once all my images were done, I focus on adding text to the pages and adding little things such as page numbers. A change I made throughout the production included adding more pages. To begin with, I aim to create at least 32 pages, although once I started getting my book together, I realised I would need at least 40 to fit everything in and give it an even number of pages. Other than this I didn’t change much else in my book. I was happy with my original plan, so I stuck with it.

While I have strived to solve the problem independently in the past, which I always felt was expected of me by my tutors, this has often left me feeling overwhelmed by the independent immense workload that has been sent. However, I feel I have improved considerably with this, particularly weighing the problems I might face on a certain task and how to appropriately respond. A key example of a problem being resolved during this product development was putting together an organised timetable that would allow me to adapt to decision-making. Working on a rotating week on/week off schedule, I took the opportunity to complete as much work as possible from home while making room for activities beneficial to my mental health, such as going outside, watching films, and playing games.

In conclusion, I feel that I have succeeded in fulfilling the project as set by the course. But certain aspects of the production could have been done better in more visual detailed pages. However, the number of strengths far outweighs the number of weaknesses. One such strength which has resulted from this project was able to use InDesign properly and professionally and I have got a lot better at it compared to when I first started using it. I feel that I managed to create my book independently using the software and happy with the outcome. Making a product that had to look professional and then be printed gave me the motivation to make my book perfect, meaning I learnt how to use all the features that design includes.

I found the project fun as I could just get on with it and do my own thing. I think this has helped me as I usually rely on a little bit of guidance, like being told what I must make and how I could improve. I hope that once my book is printed it will look just as good and be evidence of how hard I have worked towards it and towards Uni the past years.

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