By our next meeting, our script was almost finalized. We then started to design our pages with text. (our story book will be alternating between pages with the body text, and pages with illustration, such that the illustration will describe and show what the text on its adjacent page says)
We explored different fonts for our scripts and different colour schemes for our script pages.
and we decided to use pastel colours as the background for the body text because they are sweet colours that will appeal to the children. In addition, as a background colour, they are not too striking and will not fight for too much attention. For the font type, initially, we decided to use Hobo Std. But after a consultation with Julian, he pointed out that the font is not readable due to its short tails for alphabets like 'y' and 'g'. We all agreed that it is important for the font to be legible, recognizable, and readable for the children because at the age of (6-9), they have just started learning to read and write. So the type of font that we use, is very crucial and important. In the end, we decided to use Chalkboard, which has a clear distinction between the upper and lower case. The tails of 'y' and 'g' are also long enough for people to read them easily. Lastly, the font type looks handwritten, thus we hope that the children will feel less distant when they read our e-book.
At the same time we were working on our script pages, we are also working on our illustrations. However, we encountered problems of inconsistency. Because illustration done by different people will result in different images. The chickie page 1 can look different from page 2. Our illustrations were not standardized and the differences could be easily recognized. Thus, we decided to change the way we work. Instead of splitting the storybook into 3 parts, we split the workload into 3 big categories:
- drawing
- tracing
- colouring
By doing so, our illustrations became standardized, and the resulting computed image was also much more standardized. The colours used were repeated in the different pages to achieve consistency and coherence.
At this stage, our e-book is almost completed. So we started working on the other parts of our e-book. Zhenyang being the only computing student from our group, had to help us with the interactivity components of our e book. As he figure our the programming codes, we designed 3 colouring pages that are available for children to download, so that they can print them out to colour them physically. We also moved on to design a page which allows children to fill in their names, giving them a sense of ownership. Zhen yang managed to conquer the codes and made our activity, "spot-the-difference' work. encouraging words will be given as the game progresses. Children are also able to type in their names on the page which says "this book belongs to ... " at the same time, the cover page and back page of the book were also designed and completed.
With everything completed. we made inserted our pages into an e-book which works in a flash project such that the pages will flip by clicking on the number page.
These are our finalized pages:
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