The Stuff I've Not Bought Into College!

Different star shape trials

3 different owls with different expessions using embroidery

Different amounts of embroidery on the stars

Three cheeky aliens.

I made three of each finished toy after I had got the shape, and I have submitted 4 toys in total, 2 aliens for different embroidery and facial expressions, one star with the amount of embroidery that I felt was the best, and the owl I liked best for finish and expression.

Evaluation and Conclusion

I’ve really enjoyed doing my Final Major Project.  It’s combined two things that I enjoy doing – creating something using fabric and creating images.

Toy Development.

Because I already had a strong idea of how I wanted the characters to look, toy development became an exercise in problem solving, and to a certain extent compromising, when it came to the materials I could source.

Trial shapes for stars.

I had sketched the alien as far back as last summer, Little Star and Owl had started to develop during the early part of Self-Promotion when we were doing badges and cards.  I had a fair idea of their shape and relative size.  The hardest one to develop was the star.  It took me several attempts to really get the shape I wanted, even though it’s actually the simplest character in terms of colour and facial expression. The Owl also needed more work on the block shape.  Both the alien and owl had more surface decoration and details to work out, and take more work in terms of embroidery and sewing. 

Owl needed to change shape too - so his wings didn't stick out!

As Ben pointed out, these are only proto-types, which someone else would have worked on independently from a finished book, so developing toys first and then using them in illustration is a topsy-turvy process.  I appreciate this, but part of the challenge for me has been to make a character and then express it as closely as I can in a book form.   Who knows, I might one day be presented with a developed character and told to illustrate exactly that.

I have used lots of skills I already had, like pattern cutting and sewing for this part of the project, but I had not looked at or done machine embroidery before.  I can see myself using this again (when I can get hold of a second-hand machine), maybe to produce things to go on Etsy.   I can see this sort of embroidery adding value to promotional goods as well.  I have thought about sewing/applique for creating images, but I’m too fond of painting and I would need to find a really good photographer to get the image digitalised.  I’m also not sure I have the patience to work in this sort of way either – paint is such instant colour.

Book Development

I looked at a lot of board books before sketching, and it helped!  My instant reaction to the whole board book and toy thing had been to dismiss them slightly as an inferior product to Picture Books, or just a truncated version with a spin off toy.  I now see I was wrong and that there is a whole pre-school, pre-reading set of books that are very cleverly devised, written and illustrated for this age group. 

 

I really enjoyed painting my images for my board book.  It was fun to crank up the colours and get out a big brush to do the backgrounds.  Whilst I am pleased with the images, I realise now that one of my biggest shortcomings is to leave the text as – almost – an afterthought.  I need to have a clearer idea of the text, font, size and space it will take up on the page from the work go, and should concentrate on page design as much as character design.  I think I got a bit carried way with the whole ‘making-a-toy’ thing, and left the text behind.

I also enjoyed the challenge of physically making a board book, it made me consider the needs for that age-group more, and do more research.  It’s a different approach to making a hard-back book, for an adult or older children, who are more likely to treat a book more gently.  There are lots of things to be taken into consideration to produce a more durable product that can be used independently by little people with little (but very strong!) hands.  I’ve explored things like different card and paper finishes, as well as size.  

The more I look at other board books, the less convinced I am that these particular characters are as good as some others for toddlers.  For me, Bing bunny is spot on, a toddler with appropriate responses, and whilst Maisy has friends, her story lines are very direct and accessible to toddlers.  I think I might be slightly out of touch with this age group, and need to rethink some of the story lines before approaching publishers, or use them for picture books instead of board books.

Conclusion.

There is a large chunk of publishing aimed at small children, with some exciting, colourful and interesting products around.   I feel I need to do more research into characters and images, and perhaps even sit in the corner of a playgroup to really get back to how these little ones look at life.  I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Lucy Cousins (Maisy’s author) is a mother of four, or that Ted Dewan had a toddler underfoot when he developed Bing.   I hadn’t appreciated how long ago it was since I had toddlers running around, and it’s dangerous to think you know an age group just because you’ve experienced living with a couple. 

This has been an interesting project.  I feel I’ve learnt a lot and discovered some gaps I need to fill, particularly with page design, text and bleed.  The feedback from group tutorials and the power point presentations has been very valuable.  The experience of talking about my project in front of others felt nerve-wracking, but it was really useful to put my aims into words, and then do the work needed.

Thanks again for all your help and advice.

More stories for Little Star

Story lines since making toys

I have thought of several storylines for Little Star as a character.  I initially thought of the board books as being abridged versions of longer picture books, and that the main character could have all sorts of adventures where the star could light up events or help out..

My story line ideas so far are:

Lighting up a little Christmas Tree

Helping an alien find his way home

Becoming the light in a lighthouse.

Making friends with a spaceman

Helping an owl that can’t see very well (needs glasses).

One of my ideas for self-promotion is to make a book using a double page spread from each of the stories, set to ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”  This would be a useful showcase for all the stories and show some artwork without completing all of the individual books.

Board Book Illustrators Research

Board book illustrators and writers

I looked at several writers and/or illustrators of board books.

Stephen Cartwright, Lucy Cousins, Eric Carle, Ted Dewan and Axel Scheffler, to name a few.  I’ve chosen to write about three.

Stephen Cartwright developed the popular Apple Tree Farm books along with writer Heather Amery for Usborne Books.  The illustrations look very simple and child friendly, but have a large amount of detail within them.  The children in the illustrations, even though they are stylized, move and express emotions very accurately and strike a cord with other children.  The animals are cuddly without being sickly sweet or cute.  The backgrounds are simple but you immediately know where the event is taking place.  He treads an amazingly fine line between realism and cartoon.

Usborne books developed a dual text approach to books to enable younger readers to get more from their books.  There is text top and bottom of the pages.  The upper text contains a more detailed story, whilst the lower text is a simpler sentence that still carries the same story line but that an early reader can achieve by his/herself.  Stephen Cartwright therefore had to illustrate the stories so that the images could be interpreted very clearly by two different levels of readers.  No mean feat.  And, the text had to go top and bottom of the illustrations.

Not surprisingly, he had a good working relationship with Usborne, producing Phonics books, First Experience books and the Apple Tree Farm range, with all their pop-up and lift-the-flap spin offs.   One of his trademarks was to include a small duckling in every picture for small children to spot, which was such a clever ploy.  So even before children could read, they were searching the illustration for duck (as he was called) and really looking at the images.

Duck even starred in his own books, he was so popular!

And there was a toy duck, now not in production. - They got the beak just right.

Ted Dewan

I missed out on Bing Bunny.  My children were too old when they were produced, and I wasn’t looking round for toddler books when they were in the shops.

From the images I’ve hunted down on the web, he is the perfect toddler character.  Again, not too ‘cute’, but still toddler friendly, Bing’s facial expressions and body language capture his different emotions really well.  His little toy companion works a treat as an extension of both his feelings and ours.  I love the retro feel to the artwork and backgrounds, and the colours are also just right, bright and attractive but not gaudy.  Again, the backgrounds are so simple, but just the addition of a hand basin tells you we are in the bathroom.

The book titles are spot on too, with just the sort of events a child of that age will   have experienced – getting their hands sticky, being introduced to new food, going to bed.  All the areas that can become battlegrounds treated with humour.

It’s a Bing thing.  He needs to be re-published.

Lucy Cousins.

I love Maisy for her hand-painted feel and distinctive black outline.  She has a rightful place in popular toddler literature for the accessible ‘I-could-do-this’ feel to the images.  Lucy Cousins has created a very colourful but simple world, which again introduces toddlers to everyday events that they might not have experienced yet, such as swimming, sleep-overs and camping.

 

One of the things I particularly like about Maisy is how Lucy Cousins dresses her.  She is as likely to be in a pair of dungarees as anything, and even though she is a feminine character, she reads very much as a second or third child who is dressed in anything (as long as it’s clean) and gets on with life without fussing. I think this is a large part of her appeal.

She has a range of friends to explore experiences with, and is a very positive character.  The style of illustration is instantly recognisable.

 

Making a Board Book - Evaluation of finished images

Evaluation of Finished images

I am really happy with the finished images.  They are quite simple, but the looser background makes them textured without being too cluttered.  I prefer them without the text , and I know I need to consider the text more as I'm composing a page, particularly when thinking of a book this size, but I’m happy with the way the text moves around the page.

I think the images are quite accessible to small children.  They are colourful, and the spaceships have details that don’t distract too much but add interest for that audience.   They were quite quick to work through, and I think they look lively as a result.  The aliens are a cheerful bunch, and leave their friends to go to bed smiling and happy, which should please parents!  The Moon is a background type of character – in other books I’ve imagined, he is always a silent presence, like a non-interfering adult, letting Little Star carry the plot. 

I'm pleased with the way the toys and the book go togetheras an early reading experience for a small child.  I would love to make a bunch of different coloured aliens to sit together on a shelf with the book. 

Making the Board Book - Images.

Developing board book images.

I wanted my images to be recognisably set in Outer Space, not too crowded, and colourful.  Making the sequenced dummy books was the most useful thing I could have done towards developing the final images, because I could see the errors at this stage.

Dummy book page with colours not reading as different enough from each other

I needed punchier colours that stood out from each other.  I decided early on that each Alien has a Spaceship and a number the same colour as itself.  This gives younger children stronger visual clues to help read the sequence.  I actually went out and bought a brighter green paint and Rose madder, so that the colours would look as bright as possible.

I tend to paint my images too close to the edge of the page, so I tried to keep the images slightly smaller in relation to the size of the page.  This was also to give me more room for the text as well.   As the background was going to be very dark at the edges, I decided to paint the image, and then scan a drawing on top, as it gives a very dark line that stands out against the blue.  I painted around the images in tones of blue that were lighter than the background, the lightest around the figure itself.   I used large brushes for this to give a looser background compared to the more tightly painted figures and spaceships.

Making a Board Book - Text and Font.

The Text

I based the writing on ‘Five little Ducks went swimming one day’, so that the book can be sung as well as read.  Instead, its Five aliens going over the moon.  I wanted it to be a bed-time book, so they go home to their own spaceships, leaving Little Star and Moon to return to a friendly cloud to sleep (I’ve watched too much CBeebies).  The second book is the traditional ‘Twinkle Twinkle little star' which is so well known, that I felt I could play around with the images in terms of accuracy a little more.  I know the images had to be accurate with a number book.  Small children are very proud of their counting skills, and would be the first to complain if a page was short of an alien.  

 

The Font.

I needed an appropriate font for the text.  The dummy books I made up using Chalkboard, as so many of the books for this age group use a rounded sans-serif font which is easier for small children to pick out individual letter shapes.

Ben suggested that I use the lightbox to create my own font by hand lettering on top of existing fonts.  I tried this, but wasn’t pleased with the results, as I couldn’t get the lettering the right thickness, and having looked at toddler books again, I decided to go back to an existing font, but find a better one than chalkboard.  After lots of searching, I came up with Tecton Pro, extended bold to get the width of lettering that I wanted.  It looks cleaner and neater than my text, which fits in with the (slightly) digital look of the illustrations.  I chose white for the main body of the text, with Pink for the title to make it stand out.  As I discussed in my Power-point session, it would be great to produce different ranges of books using different colours to indicate the subject area.

Making a Board Book - Construction and Evaluation

Making up the finished Board Book

Once I had all seven images ready to print, I looked at different types of paper at the printers to get them printed on and after some discussion, went for a 300g silk finished card, as it seemed thin enough to be foldable, but not thin enough to tear down the fold.  It has a shiny surface that is not as tacky as photographic paper so the pages don’t stick together. 

Sticking the book together went pretty well.  The inside pages stuck down well enough, but the Daler Mounting board is fractionally thicker than the book-making board we use at college, and seems softer and more easily dented.   Because the board was thicker, my original printed cover didn’t go round the outside of the book far enough.  It had been printed at the wrong dpi too, so it needed re-printing.  The second cover fitted and was a sharper image, but I didn’t quite fold it with the title central to the spine, which caused problems when it was guillotined.  The softer cardboard also buckled under the guard as it was guillotined, and the book was pushed slightly out of shape.  

Product Evaluation

1. There is a glaring error on the last page of the book – I didn’t make the image quite long enough, folded it inaccurately,  and now have a white strip down that edge as it would have taken too much off the rest of the book to guillotine it away.

2.  The board I used was not suitable for the guillotine, which has left the spine looking buckled and knocked out of shape.  Using the guillotine was still the best way of getting crisp edges though.  Also, if I had made the spine fractionally smaller than the width of the finished book, it might have been under less pressure and looked neater overall. 

3.  I didn’t get the text central to the spine, which means that the text on the back and front covers are also out, although having measured the difference, the text would still be to close to the outer edge on the front cover even if I had stuck the cover down accurately.   I over compensated when making the cover bigger.

4.  The book has the chunky, toddler friendly feel that I wanted, but it has grown!  I originally intended it to be 14 x 12cm, and it has grown to 14.5 x12.5cm, which accounts for the strip on the last page!  Even though I had left a 0.5 bleed around, if Jim hadn't trimmed it the size he has, the text weould be too close to the edge on some pages, (Alien 3 and 1 in particular)

Board Book Making - Research into Bookmaking

Making a board book

I had now idea how to construct a board book.  I had looked at books in shops for their style and content, but not closely enough to re-construct one myself.  I bought a board book in a charity shop so that I could take it to pieces if necessary.  The pages seemed to be hinged by the printed paper attached to the boards.

I asked Jim and Jess how they would make a board book and they confirmed that that was the method .  Jim suggested trialling photographic paper as it has a laminated feel to the surface that would be durable and suitable for small children.  I made a dummy book using photographic paper, which does have the strength to hold the pages together, without tearing at the spine.  The only problems are that (1)the book will have to be lazer printed as normal ink jet print rubs off from photographic paper, and (2) that the surface of the photographic paper feels sticky.  Kerri pointed this out as part of her feedback during group tutorials, which was useful, as it made me look at different types of paper stock.

As the book is constructed by folding the printed page in half and sticking the board on the back of each side, it makes construction easy as there is no pagination needed to form the book.

What you do need to do though,  is build a 'hinge' into the book cover to allow it to open. This is done by sticking the card that forms the spine onto the inside of the cover, sticking a strip next to it of approx 1.5cm width, and then the card for the back of the book next to it.  Leaving gaps between the strips allows movement.  The two strips are not glued, but the back cover and front are, so when the book is assembled the unglued strips act as a hinge.

This is the back of the book and spine under construction.  The rest of the book is already glued in the background.

I had asked Jim to guillotine the finished dummy to neaten it up.  When I looked at the dummy book compared to books in shops, I decided to use a different board to make the finished book from, as the book-making board in college is grey and gives the book a grey edge.  I decided to use daler mounting board as the main cardboard, as my finished book is bigger and chunkier than the dummy, and I thought it would stand up to toddler wear and tear more.

Making Soft Toys 3.

Embroidery.

Following my research into soft toys, I decided that the safest way to add eyes and facial expressions to my toys was to embroider them on, rather than use stud fastenings or buttons.  This also meant that I could draw different expressions and try to re-create them.

I initially talked my project through with a company who provide embroidered badges for school uniforms, and found that I could send them an image in a PNG file that they could embroider and price up for me depending on the stitch count.  I wondered if the college had a similar machine, and found a Tutor in the textiele department to talk to.  She reccomended using a Bernina sewing machine from the Fashion deparment, but doing heavy embroidery for such areas as eyes on separate, stronger fabric and then sewing them onto the toys afterwards.

Toys with different amounts of emboridery and different eye shapes.

The Bernina was brilliant.  I had already tried similar things on my domestic machine with no success, but the Bernina produced a satin-type stitch that I could vary in length, which meant I could produce an embroidered line that tapered.  I had already asked about machine embroidery thread, as I wanted the embroidery to be a texture rather than added colour.  I ended up buying Gutterman’s embroidery thread in the same colour as the cloth I had sourced.  I needed to use interfacing to back the cloth as I embroidered otherwise the cloth falls to bits!

I cut out the toys and marked out what embroidery I needed before coming to college as I knew that would take time, and I could only borrow the sewing machine for a day at a time.  the fashion department was stretched for resources because of their up-and coming show, and I couldn’t guarantee getting a machine more than once, so I had to make the most of it.  I therefore cut out three of each toy and marked different levels of embroidery on the cloth, so that I could compare the finished toys.

Making Soft Toys 2.

Stuffing

The above images shows how two different types of stuffing can make or break the shape of a toy.  Exactly the same pattern has been used, but the softer ‘kapoc’ style stuffing makes the toy loose it’s body shape compared to the shaped foam body.

Upholstery foam is quite easy to get hold of locally, but I found the best place (and the most generouse) was the scrap store on Union street.  The foam block I bought there was not wide enough to make the alien’s body, and I had to try a couple of different types of glue to stick two blocks together before cutting the shape out.  I found a ‘Bostic’ gclear type of glue containing acetone made an almost instant strong seam. 

I then hand drew the shape of the front, sides, base, top of the head and back on all 6 sides of the foam block and then cut away with scissors until I had the right shape.

It’s a messy process –  blue foam chips get everywhere, but I am pleased witht the shape that a foam body gives the toys.

Making Soft Toys 1.

Sourcing Fabric

Velour is a difficult fabric to track down.  I found very few sites that sold it on the internet, and when I did, the colours were too dull to be attractive to a small child.  As it is a stretchy (Knitted) fabric, it is difficult to sew on domestic machines, so I couldn’t find any in Fabric retailers in Plymouth.  I am assuming that it is the sort of fabric that is produced in bulk, in pre-ordered colours and goes straight to manufacturers.

I therefore compromised by using Fleece fabric, which is more readily available for domestic use, and comes in a wider range of bright colours.  There are sites available that sell fleece fabric, but for cost and speed, I bought the fabric from Plymouth market, as I could buy small amounts and not pay postage (which doubled the price of the fleece being sold on the net).  These toys were only supposed to be proto-types as I couldn’t reproduce the actual  factory finish.

Fleece fabric is warm to the touch, like velour and is soft.  It has no definite grain, but I found it to be stretchier across the fabric than along the selvedge.  It would not be suitable for a finished toy as it is not hardwearing enough and can’t take much in the way of embroidery.

Final Major Project.

For my final project, I decided to develop a book suitable for a child aged 2-5 with a soft toy of one of the characters.   There are lots of products that are developed from popular children’s books, but I felt that a soft toy was an achievable aim, and I wanted to use my pattern cutting skills.  Also, after I have left college,  developing a soft toy or doll that I could sell as part of an online shop could be useful.

 I looked in the following shops for inspiration – Waterstones, Beau Cadeau – a shop near Frank gate, Marks and Spencer, Boots, Build-a bear and Toys r us. 

Waterstones was the most productive place for looking at toys that are spin offs from popular books, but the other shops gave me construction and character ideas to follow through.   There were also plenty of sites on the internet that have toys that I havn’t seen sold in Toy shops, but which are spin offs from popular children’s books.    There are ranges of ‘The cat in the Hat’ toys from Dr Seuss’s books that I've never seen sold here.

After some research (consisting of squeezing cuddly toys) I decided that the toys I liked the best and wanted to develop  generally hasd solid foam bodies with a soft outer fabric – generally a knitted velour, which is hard wearing and can be sponged/washed.   A really good example of this is the Moomin toys developed by Aurora.  They have the shape really well developed – one shop assistant  described them as having ‘just the right amount of tummy’

Aurora also produce the soft toys for The Gruffalo,which has a huge range of different activity books and products on offer.  I asked at Waterstones, and The Gruffalo is their most popular children's book - the power of televison!