Toast Boy

Introduction

Many of you who came to the exhibition or know me would have seen the product, which was a children’s story book, that I completed for a final year project. I was not sure what I would achieve with such a product, I knew that I wanted to create something enjoyable for all audiences and also that could teach someone something.

Inspiration

Finding the inspiration for this project was extremely difficult. I knew I wanted a story, with morals. Which led me to read fables and short stories. My brain then fizzled out to children’s books, because they have a certain charm and timeless quality about it.

The original drawing of Toast boy was done on the margin of my notebooks during a particularly enlightening class. (ahem).

Initiation

I knew what I wanted after awhile of thinking and exploring. A children’s book with a story to carry it off into the sunset.

I needed a story that was appealing, easily understood and enjoyable for all age types. At later stages of the production I drew upon Grug series by Ted Prior (a primary school favourite close to my heart) as well as Dick Bruna’s Miffy for its simplicity in colours and imagery.

The story board needed to be tight and I found that it was one of the most challenging aspects, many people skim over the story board but it is the most important aspect, and using it for a book was a good idea because you could get an idea of where pictures needed to be placed in the order of the book. (I found Writing for Digital Media- a class that I took- was really helpful for this). I used Celtx for creating my images and also placing the text underneath to get  a strong feel for the flow of story and concept.

Story Board

It was time to buckle down and find a program that I could create the story boarded images in.

Originally wanted to generate it in 3D and make it entirely 3D – soft-doughy looking, like the animated series of Miffy.

I had drawn out sketches for scanning and easy modelling. But I found that it was probably better just to make it as an Illustrator Maya model.

Illustrator input as a polygonal model in Maya. With toon shader

The above is a preliminary early model of an idea. However, after reviewing the story boards and thinking about the best way for me to complete it I decided a more hands on approach was a good one to utilise!

In the end…

Also, being inspired by Weta Workshop in New Zealand helped me along the way; demonstrating a hands on approach combined with computer programs can generate great results! I also enjoyed the idea of stop motion (Coraline- another recent inspiration) so I decided the best way to keep the mix between digital and hands on or ‘analogue’ was to create things by hand in production, then post production was done through clean up of imagery, placing text.

Here were a few of the early models out of Das Clay I created:

Early Toast

Early Cupcake

I created a mini set for the characters to sit and stand in and after doing digital composite and using a SLR, I took photographs (as opposed to straight out illustrations or rendered models) to be the images in my book!

Mini studio with grass and wire cutters! This is where everything was photographed in the book

Not only do the photos need to be gret but the text needed to adhere to the feel of the book as well. I didn’t want to use a simple and common “Times New Roman” for this book, I decided to go further and create my own text out of clay.

Hand rolled alphabet and numbers (for my business card/assignment) which were then photographed and used as text.

Text

Some of the letters above are already moved, as each letter had an assigned layer. It looks funny that the ‘g’ intersects the capital ‘I’ etc.

But the idea was that it was natural, like dough to suit the bread/toast theme. I also wanted to go with a toast shaped book, but my budget would most definitely be exceeded.

Printing

The printing and the budget are aspects of the project that get overlooked the most. As well as rendering and post production work for movies (I found it as a common mistake anyway!) In creating the images, and photographing this and modeling that, you realise as soon as you have your images etc, the work is really only half done. There is printing to worry about. Where to get it done? Research the cheapest place, number of copies? paperback? hard cover? Paper stock? landscape? portrait? size of the page? binding? perfect binding? saddle stitching? digital format? and more questions need to be answered and covered when looking for printing.

In the end after much research and travel I found that a printing place close to me could do the job! And they did a very good job in my opinion. Thanks to Lauren and Tom at Snap!

Minimalist Gallery exhibit of Toast Boy!

I also handed it in as my final assignment in this packaged form

Packaged Books

With my hand made origami book mark business card. (Which are different to the actual business cards I have today but that’s another story…)

The Future

I’ll leave that to the mystery that is life.