Showcase

Thurs 7th June

On the day of the showcase, we all had to go to college to make sure we got everything we wanted for our showcase including IPad for online work (I didn't use an IPad). Around 4:20 we made our way down down to the Apex hotel. Arriving at the hotel, the room we help our showcase was really nice, it was the perfect size for our showcase, like not too small, so everyone had to be huddle together but not too big that there were big gaps, and how the banners and tables were laid out looked good along with the amount of natural light.

I would recommend that for the size group we had the Apex Hotel was the best place for the showcase.

For my showcase I had everything displayed so that it would be easy to see, I think the table size was just right for the amount of work I had. I was a bit worried that I had a bit more 
than needed to bring but it did show different projects/work I've done from using photoshop, workinh with a small buisness and FMP project. So really mine showed a variety of projects I've done since being on the Media course.

 

From both my mum and nan they were very impressed with the different pieces of work and also very very impressed with everyone elses work. Two favourite was Brandon T-Shirts and Flos Tea boxes.

On the table, a few people like my book cover and even one sat at a table nearby and read a bit of Polly book which made me feel good that someone took an intrest in a book I wrote.

In the other room where the films were presented, it was a perfect size that could even fit more people so if it was just for the moving images group and if it were bigger, you could have more people in the room. I think presenting their work in one long film was a good idea, but I think it would have been better if there was a small break inbetween just to make it eaiser to know when one film end and another begin, because their were two films that I thought were together. 

For me, the highlight was getting an award. Hearing that only 4 people were getting an award I never thought I would get one, so I was very happy and proud of myself for getting one. The funny part was I knew it was me before Ed said my name because once he mention getting ost in Rome, I knew it was me. Also, my Mum and Nan both knew it when Rome was mention.

What I would suggest is that when doing the awards again mention it to the parents before hand so they can be prepare to take photos or video. 

Last vlog

This is the Vlog I recoded of my book thats been printed. Here I will be talking about the good and improvement.

 Link to Final Vlog.  Vlog


Compartment

This Years                                                                       Last years
 

My showcase

For my showcase, I want to display all three of the book I wrote for each FMP. From what I've heard is that it's going to be a white wall or something like that so at this point this is the design that I have pictured in my mind.






The idea what to have my hooded cap from FMP 1 and have that pin against the white wall then have each book somehow display on the wall on top the cape. Then around the edges, I could add other designs I have used for my other FMP's like the pentagram and mask and my Doll, Polly.

I thought for her I could try and find a cheap plastic display case to hold her in because at this moment she's going to be placed on the ground so I thought a display case would be better and give it a better look.

I was also thinking of adding fake trees' to give it more decorative look since it also relates to stories I wrote for two of my Books.

For now, this is my idea, and unless the section changes, I will keep the idea I have and rearrange everything to fit depending on the size or space left maybe even adding on or leaving how it is.

I do have another idea on a layout if it changes so I won't be stuck on where everything should go.

2) video essay

Link to video


Video essay


In the video, I will be talking about the books I've found, the different covers, and what and why I chose as the main themes for the project.

Reflecting on Project 6) 1

Stories 

From the start, I wanted to write a short story book with the theme being horror/thriller. At the beginning I was trying to come up with different stories was a challenge because I had to come up with multiple stories whereas writing a novel it's based on one story with different chapters still relating to the main story. Using google, I looked up other short story books to see what others had done. Most were collections from authors, which was annoying as I wanted to find short stories that authors wrote themselves.

I came across a camp horror stories; it was that book that gave me the idea on have all the stories keeping with the same theme, which would make writing the stories easier as at least with this way I can have the stories all relating to the same theme.

Looking at other short stories, I notice that car journeys were a themed I haven't seen yet, so I decided to make that my themed for my book.

I started with land on the google doc. All I did was write small sentences on what would happen in the story, a bit similar to chapter timelines so that when it came to writing the whole story, I knew what I need to write at the beginning, middle and end.

The other five stories I wrote down in my Idea journal because I had it and wanted to uses it, so I used it for writing my five ideas down for my stories, and it was easier to get too when a thought came to mind.

When it came to writing the whole story out, some were harder to write than others, even with the ideas I wrote down, it was still too hard to get them written down into a whole story. So it did take a while to get my stories written. Usually, I would write them either on break or at home, so that helped a lot to get most of the writing. When it came close to needing to finish writing them so that I could grammar check them there were two stories left which I ended up not writing because it was taking too long to write and I was having trouble focusing on them to write them. So in the end, I wrote only 4 out of the six stories which I still think is good.

On Grammarley



Before Grammarly, I printed out copies of my stories for me to write out loud and to highlight so that when using Grammarly I will know what to change and also with the help of Grammarly I will also know what to add in to make the story even better.


Self-publishing and printing

When I started thinking about my FMP project I knew I wanted to self-publish, because I had plan that in the future that I would self-publish my book and I thought this would be a great opportunity because here I got teachers to help me and give me their advice and also trying it out so that when I do I'll know what to do.

Why I thought about self-publishing was because it was in case one I didn't get in university I could still try to activate my dream at becoming an author and being that their's isn't much of a chance I'll get published by actual publishers I decided to go straight into self-publishing.

I did do research on self-publishing, even joined a self publishing and book marketing group where I asked questions about what would i have to if I wanted to make some money (again for the future), and the admin of the group who's from the UK said that I needed to sign up to tax self-assessment which did put me off doing the self-publishing part, since I didn't see the point on signing up for my book.

Later on, I was told that I didn't need to sign up since I wasn't getting money out of it, so I went back to planning to self-publishing, but then I got told that I did need to sign up and again got put off it and decide just to print a book off instead.

At this point, if I had decided to carry on to self-publish, I think I would have ended up not bothering only because now I do want to get my book publish in the future so instead I am going to try harder at writing in hopes I will get published. Also, I'll be going to university in September, studying creative writing, so I feel I'll have more of a chance of getting published by an actual publisher.

At this point when I decided to print my book, I decided to use Blurb because last year it was recommended to me, but I ended up using Doxzoo to print my book out which went well, but this year I wanted to try and use a different one and so went on to use Blurb. Using Indesign I started to create a layout for my book, lucky Steve called me over and told me that Blurb provides its layout for their books which saved me the trouble of creating one. One problem was that the system needed updating so I couldn't upload my finished story.

Once updated I made my start on following it information and started creating my book.

Book cover

Knowing that the book cover would be my biggest challenge I decided to create two. The idea was to have one cover drawn and the other using an image. Why I chose to draw is because this was originally was going to be a self-publishing project I was worried about the whole taking a photo on someone properties or not know that the area was private property that I decided that it would be best to draw it to be safe.

The drawing was proving to be a challenge as when it came to drawing the car it needed so much more detail then I thought that I ended up leaving it and focusing on my second cover.

The second cover was the image. The image was the front of my nan's car. I also took some other random photos as well. The idea was to have only front window covered in frost with either a handprint or a pair of red eyes to give it that horror look. It took a while to create the frost effect as I was having trouble finding a video to help me with creating the frost effect on the window with using a black background.

With getting the image how I wanted I could see that it was a letdown and was no better than my last book cover from the year before. The idea was to make an improved cover to show my improvement from each book. This leads to creating a third book cover, this more of a straightforward cover so that it would still look good and achievable to do.

Finishing the third book cover, Nick suggested that my cover could be better and created his cover and help give me an idea. So for this fourth book cover, I didn't create a sketch because it was getting to the point that I need to get this book printed, so what I did was chose another image and using my imagination, created an even better cover.


Book Part 1

Using the layout from Blurb Indesign I need a certain amount of pages. It required six more pages it each time. If I had finished it and it had 34 pages it would add on two more to make 36, So I needed to make sure I used as much of the pages I needed and hoped it wouldn't add on.

When I was finished, there was still a few pages lefts which I couldn't get rid off because it would only be added back on, So I added an epilogue to help fill in the pages.

I found Blurb better than the last book printers I used because it provided the layout for you so that way you know it's right and should be printed correctly.

I would say the only problem was the spin of the book. It's blank and white which I should have added the black to make it look better, but hopefully, it will look good once printed.






Book Part 2

   
The book now here I can see that it is small and very light. I know that because of the way it looks that I chose the right size because anything bigger would have been even thinner fewer pages and something you couldn't call a book.

Looking over the book it looks great, the colouring looks great, the font styles are different but it all works well, and the size of the fonts is perfect, I think that there big enough for people to read but not too big that it takes up the whole of the page.

Screencast 3

Here is the link to my 3rd Screencast.

Screencast for Assessment 4

I will be talking to you about my schedules update, my book cover change, and where my Book is at this point.

Product

At moment Book is being printed at this moment, so I've received the book I will produce a picture below.

  



Getting the book onto blurb was a bit of a challenge because first once I was finished with everything I need to link the files up on the Blurb book creator on InDesign.

It also has the information on what Types I'm using and size.

Next when I would go to upload it would say that there was something wrong with pages 3 and five about too much information. Now I could carry uploading or cancel and find the problem, not wanting to go wrong I cancelled and back over the two pages. Finding the problem and fixing it, I went back to uploading and before sending to the blurb website I was able to get a quick preview so looking over those I kept seeing a mistake, like too many pages and also a name mistake and the worst was that I put in two the same story. So for the Forest story, I put the land story in twice, so that was a close call.

Once everything was right, I loaded it onto the website, went to cart; I added ten books. With 10 I get 10% off which was £19.53 which was the same price for nine books with no % off. Adding on shipping brought the total up to £35.53? I paid and should be getting the printed copies in 4 to 5 days.


Arrived

Opening the package the books were a lot thinner and lighter then I thought it would be, I knew I hadn't gotten a lot of pages, but it does show that I chose the right book size. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able even to call it a book.

Looking at the front and back of the book it looks excellent, the font is easy to see, the colours red, black and grey go well on the back page. The font size is just the right size to be able to read it.

The front, again the font is easy to read I like the shadow effect, it's easy to see the sky and branches.


The inside I chose the black and white, cream Uncoated and I like it, it goes well with the black writing, and I think it goes well with the theme of the book. Also, the reason I chose the cream uncoated is that in my last book I used the white and I thought about changing it and went for that one.


How the writing is placed for me is a mixed review, because I don't mind it I think it looks good, but then my mum comment on it saying that it was too near the edges for her like, which then made me re-think about. The font looks great, and the size is just right, to me, it's big enough for anyone to read and not too big that it takes up so much of the page.

The fonts used for the titles look amazing I think it goes well with the horror-themed.

Overall I am delighted with how it came out; it look's fantastic. Very pleased.